Thursday, Apr 25, 2002
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By Atul Aneja
New Delhi's response came amid media reports in which the visiting Swiss foreign minister, Joseph Deiss said that he had conveyed his country's concern over the ``tragic'' events in Gujarat to his counterpart, Jaswant Singh, as well as the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee. Official sources said the Government also took strong exception to the ``leaked'' internal communication on Gujarat between the German and Dutch missions here, with their governments. ``Foreign interference'', however, touched a new high today, with the visiting Canadian minister of inter-governmental affairs, Stephanie Dion, stating that he was ``eager'' to participate in a peace march, proposed by the Defence Minister, George Fernandes, in Gujarat. The visiting leader, in fact, urged ``all people of goodwill'' to ``turn up and show how much they want the return of peace in the State.'' Ironically, Mr. Dion hoped that his expressions of ``concern'' will not be construed as ``interference'' in India's internal affairs. The spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, Nirupama Rao, in a statement, noted that ``some foreign countries and missions in Delhi are injecting themselves into the highly politically charged internal debate in the country and are creating an impression of playing a partisan role.'' She warned that this was contradictory to well-established norms of diplomacy and ``injurious to the friendly relations that exist between India and the EU as well as individual European countries identified in the press as sources of leaks and political interference.'' The spokesperson regretted that ``some foreign missions in India continue to interfere in the already vigorous debate going on in our country.'' She added that this intrusion on India's domestic turf was being executed through inspired ``leaks'' of internal reports or by ``substantive political comments on the subject.'' The Government was not averse to discussing Gujarat privately. In fact, the situation in the State did come up for discussion between the visiting Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, with Mr. Singh on Tuesday, the official sources said. Incidentally, Mr. Downer, in an informal chat with the media, while regretting the violence in Gujarat, expressed optimism about the Government's ability to bring order to the State. Mr. Singh, he said, had informed him that nearly 35,000 arrests had been made. He also rejected what he called the ``extravagant'' assertions in the media that the rioting in Gujarat was a manifestation of a new form of ``apartheid'' or was a throwback to Nazi Germany of the 1930s.
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