Friday, Sep 13, 2002
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By Our Diplomatic Correspondent
Briefing presspersons on Wednesday night, Mr. Sibal said Gen. Musharraf could not exercise ``any kind of veto'' on American policy towards India. Instead, he said the U.S. and India had made a lot of progress on the defence front. Gen. Musharraf could say what he wanted, but the question was whether the U.S. was listening to him. New Delhi was happy with the comments made by the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, backing the position that Pakistan should not interfere in the electoral process in Jammu and Kashmir. On Pakistan's pledges to end cross-border terrorism, Mr. Sibal said that India was not satisfied with them. India was persistently making this point with the international community that Pakistan had not delivered on its promises and it believed that such persistence was yielding results. New Delhi, Mr. Sibal said, would continue to raise this issue with its international interlocutors. The point of difference, he said, was that ``not enough'' was being done by the international community and not that ``nothing was being done''. Asked about the first-ever trilateral lunch meeting between the Indian, Chinese and Russian Foreign Ministers on Saturday, Mr. Sibal said it was an informal meeting and did not have any agenda. ``There's really no agenda for the meeting,'' Mr. Sibal maintained. Asked about his recent consultations in Moscow, Mr. Sibal said that it was essentially to prepare for the December visit of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, to India. A number of issues that figure on the U.N. General Assembly's agenda also came up for talks. There was ``complete understanding'' and support for India's position when it came to the relationship with Pakistan. India and Russia had decided to set up a Joint Working Group to combat terrorism. The two countries had also agreed to form an ``energy forum'' which was important from the viewpoint of India's energy security. Mr. Sibal said that India had invested $1.7 billion in the Sakhalin oil field and wanted to engage Russia on the issue of energy security. On Iraq, he said India had the impression that the U.S. intended to act through the U.N. Military action, he said was a separate issue. In his meetings in Washington, the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, had conveyed India's views on Iraq, which the U.S. seemed to take on board. India, he said, had conveyed to the U.S. its concerns on Iraq — the fact that energy supplies were sourced from the Persian Gulf and a number of Indians were resident in the region. New Delhi had also conveyed that general principles of international law applied to the Iraq situation. Political and military actions, he maintained, had to be approved by the U.N. system.
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