- NEW DELHI -- India on Friday
distanced itself from US-led calls to isolate Iran at next week's meeting
of the IAEA after controversial remarks on the issue by Washington's envoy
to Delhi enraged the nation as seldom seen before.
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- The Indian foreign ministry, facing a barrage of criticism
for apparent obsequiousness towards Washington that ranged from allies
in the Left Front to former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, appeared
to have rowed back from its recent bonhomie with the United States.
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- "During the past two weeks, India has been undertaking
active consultations with all key members of the IAEA Board of Governors
and with Iran, in order to avoid confrontation and to promote the widest
possible consensus on handling the Iran nuclear issue," a spokesman
for the Indian foreign ministry said.
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- He explained that in all the consultations, India has
urged "that Iran's right to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy
for its development consistent with its international obligations and commitments
should be respected".
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- The spokesman said: "Iran's willingness to work
together with the IAEA to remove any outstanding issues, about its nuclear
programme should be welcomed." In this regard, the agency should be
allowed to proceed according to its work programme and submit a detailed
report, he said.
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- India, he said, also welcomes all initiatives, "including
from Russia, which could enable a consensus to be reached on this issue
and urges further intensive efforts in that direction".
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- In the bargain India appealed to "all concerned
countries (to) avoid confrontation and work in the spirit of seeking a
mutually acceptable solution".
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- The Indian clarification, which came in response to a
question, coincided with comments by US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice that India should be ready to make hard choices ahead.
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- Earlier this week, US Ambassador David Mulford, in apparent
eagerness to clinch a civil nuclear energy deal with India before President
George W. Bush arrives here on March 1, said the move could die in the
US Congress if India did not vote against Iran at the February 2 IAEA meeting.
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- The Indian Express, which supports the deal, cautioned:
"India and the US are raucous democracies. Public statements from
either side quickly feed into the domestic politics of the other and complicate
the negotiations between the two governments. India and the US have made
much progress in the last few years because they have learnt one hard lesson
from the wasted decades of the past: avoid hectoring each other in public.
Mulford's remarks are an awful deviation from that sensible rule."
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- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government is already
under considerable pressure from the Left as well as sections of the Congress
to reverse its IAEA vote, the Express wrote. "By linking the implementation
of the nuclear pact and the Iran vote, Mulford has undercut the prospects
of India moving forward on both."
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- The Hindu said: "In publicly warning India, on Republic
Day eve, to vote against Iran or else, (Mulford) has outrageously crossed
the line of diplomatic propriety, inviting condemnation from political
players ranging from the Left to Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
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- "But he has also done India a service by letting
the cat out of the bag, if it was ever fully in. In his interview to the
Press Trust of India, he has spotlighted the pitiful terms of the bargain
struck by the Manmohan Singh government with Washington under the signboard
of civilian nuclear cooperation," The Hindu said.
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- "Who can, after Mr Mulford's egregious forthcomingness,
doubt that the bargain requires India to behave like a marionette - forced
at every turn of major international events to go against its own national
instincts and interests for fear of offending Washington? Today it is a
fatwa on Iran, tomorrow it will be a diktat on India's plan to separate
its civil and military nuclear facilities, which Mr. Mulford has found
to fall short of 'minimum standards'."
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- The Asian Age, commenting on Mr Mulford's faux pas, observed:
"Sometimes when you say something often enough, you start saying it
in your sleep. This is what appears to have happened to US Ambassador to
India David C. Mulford who stunned his own, and definitely Manmohan Singh's,
governments with his recent interview to a news agency."
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