WikiLeaks spares India, for now
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NEW DELHI: The initial shock of the WikiLeaks dump left India relatively unscathed on Monday. But this breather, sources said, is unlikely to last.
Officials expect the India lot of documents to be aired later this week or early next week. Given that most of the documents are dated between 2006-2010, there should be a lot of bilateral traffic on the nuclear deal which was negotiated between 2005 and 2008. It may also include details of India-US communication on the Volcker revelations, which consumed the political career of former foreign minister Natwar Singh.
While secretary of state Hillary Clinton is unlikely to come to India to soothe ruffled feathers here, senior US officials have reached out to MEA leadership to warn them in advance of possibly embarrassing revelations from the document dump.
Revelations of diplomatic communications related to the nuclear deal will be more interesting, since the deal was politically very difficult, both for PM Manmohan Singh's UPA government and the George Bush administration. In India, it was only the single-minded determination of Singh that saw the deal through, a determination that was only matched on the other side by the US president.
But those years saw some serious diplomatic activity, a lot of which was confidential and calibrated between the two sides. "We're about to witness a global RTI moment," said an official on background. How the revelations will affect an already fragile government here will be the question.
Regarding WikiLeaks, the difficulty the government will face is that Indian public opinion is remarkably sensitive and it is likely to face charges of "succumbing" to the US, something the Left parties have maintained.
On the other hand, India has reason to feel vindicated on Pakistan — much of what the cables reveal about global opinions on Pakistan, its lukewarm commitment on terrorism, the widespread fear that its nuclear weapons could fall to jihadis etc, are all subjects of Indian diplomatic lobbying for years.
There is no surprise here that India was kept out of a Turkey meeting on Afghanistan because of Pakistan. Not only was it widely reported at the time, the PM, said MEA sources, had personally taken up the issue with Turkish President Abdullah Gul who visited India soon after. To make amends, Turkey invited India to a donors' conference later.
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