Media and foreign policy

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI, JULY 22. Is there a fundamental contradiction between the necessity of talking in secret with a foreign government on the one hand and informing one's own media about that negotiation on the other?

As it fends off criticism on its handling of the summit level talks with Pakistan at Agra, the Government appears strongly convinced that it could not have conducted sensitive negotiations with Pakistan, except in secret. But the media believes that it has been badly let down by the Government's severe restriction of information flow during two days of intense negotiations at Agra. And in comparison, Pakistani officials had kept their own media well-informed of the state of play.

Gen. Musharraf and his media managers are patting themselves on the back for effectively shaping the popular perceptions of the summit. India, which initiated the process, is forced on to the political defensive.

And as partisan politics takes over the debate on engaging Pakistan, India will appear even more divided and lost in its incipient parliamentary debate on who lost Agra.

While the Government is iterating the classical principles of diplomacy, the world has changed a lot. Media today is far more intrusive than ever before and has indeed complicated the business of diplomacy and negotiation between nations. It scrutinises every tentative idea, each trial balloon, every proposal aimed at teasing the other side and forces public responses from different political formations within the country and from across the border.

Media power is a reality that cannot be wished away. Political leaders have come to terms with the new media realities in the rough and tumble of domestic politics. It is time our diplomatic establishment too recognised the new media imperative. Working with the electronic media and the internet could generate ``force multipliers'' for Indian diplomacy. Working against them would only produce negative outcomes.

The media does not expect every detail to be put out during the negotiation. But the hungry monster that it is, media expects to be fed frequently. In any event, one would think shaping the image of the evening TV news bulletin and the headline in the morning newspaper is in the interest of the Government itself.

* * *

While India holds on to the principle of confidentiality in negotiations, Pakistan is leaking various drafts of the Agra summit talks to the public. A leading Indian weekly has begun to carry them on its website.

Greater transparency will, inevitably if somewhat chaotically, be forced on the negotiating process between India and Pakistan in the coming years and months.

Instead of opposing it, the Government needs to initiate serious reforms in its information-sharing and media management policies, now widely termed as public diplomacy.

Getting the foreign policy establishment to imbibe the virtues of public diplomacy must be a key element of the long overdue security sector reforms in India.

* * *

Mr. Vivek Katju will soon head out as India's ambassador to Myanmar. For nearly six years, Mr. Katju has been Joint Secretary in-charge of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran in the Ministry of External Affairs.

Even as Governments rose and fell since the mid 1990s, continuity in policy was maintained by the extended tenure of some key officials at the Foreign Office. Mr. Katju was one of them. His tenure saw the full spectrum of diplomatic developments between India and Pakistan.

There was the renewal of engagement between the two nations by Mr. Inder Kumar Gujral and Mr. Nawaz Sharif and the formal inclusion of Jammu and Kashmir on the agenda in 1997. The nuclear tests of May 1998 were followed by meetings between the two Prime Ministers in New York, the bus journey to Lahore by Mr. Vajpayee in February 1999 and the Kargil war. Cut then to the coup by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Kandahar crisis and finally the Agra summit.

In coping with the different shades of Pakistan, Mr. Katju has acquired an awesome reputation for obduracy. But many believe that being stubborn comes with the job. In the trenches of the daily diplomatic warfare with Pakistan, tenacity in defending traditional positions and skepticism about ``creative diplomacy'' seem to be valued by the Foreign Office.

Mr. Katju's successor will be Mr. Arun Singh who recently returned from Moscow as the political counsellor in the Indian mission there and is the Joint Secretary dealing with political developments in the United Nations.

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The new U.S. Ambassador to India, Mr. Robert Blackwill, is arriving here this week. His reputation as a man who wants to drive Indo-U.S. relations forward at a rapid pace has arrived long before him. He will be eager to present his credentials quickly to the Indian President and get on with the job. But what are ``credentials?''

Credentials are letters the Ambassador carries from his Head of State and presents to the chief of the host nation. The letters, which are termed ``letters of credence'' request the receiving Head of State to give ``full credence'' to what the ambassador will say on behalf of his Government.

An ambassador is not formally recognised as such by the host country until he has presented his credentials; until then he cannot act in his official capacity outside the embassy.

When nations have good relations, as India and the U.S. do now, these become mere formalities. Most ambassadors begin their work even before they officially present their credentials.

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