President's remarks raise eyebrows

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI, MARCH 22. The President, Mr. K. R. Narayanan's sharp criticism of the United States Tuesday night at a banquet he hosted for the visiting American President, Mr. Bill Clinton, is raising eye-brows here and abroad.

Mr. Narayanan's thinly veiled references to American dominance and his strongly worded rejection of the U.S. concerns about nuclear tensions in the Subcontinent in his banquet speech are being seen here as needlessly harsh.

Reports in the U.S. media highlighted Mr. Narayanan's comments and expressed surprise at the bitter tone in the banquet.

Informed sources here say that the Government did not clear the speech of Mr. Narayanan and the remarks were his own.

The practice in the last few years has been that the President makes his own banquet speeches and does not seek prior Government clearance.

According to the sources the Government may not have any quarrel with the basic proposition of the President that India is committed to building a pluralistic and democratic world order. But the manner in which the ideas were presented might have introduced a sourness into the celebrations about a new Indo-U.S. relationship.

If diplomacy is mostly about finding the right words for the occasion, observers here say, Mr. Narayanan's speech turned out to be too prickly.

The sources say that no one from either the visiting U.S. delegation or the local U.S. embassy have lodged any formal or informal objections to Mr. Narayanan's remarks.

Mr. Clinton himself chose to ignore Mr. Narayanan's critical comments.

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