India's quest for a full-time
foreign minister By Ashok Malik
NEW DELHI - Since November when K Natwar
Singh resigned from the Indian cabinet after he
was implicated in the scandal surrounding the
United Nations' oil-for-food program with Iraq,
India has been without a foreign minister.
When Natwar left his spacious office in
South Block in the heart of the old imperial city
of Delhi, many were relieved. Pushing 75, Natwar
was largely seen as a Cold War relic, carrying the
baggage of non-alignment and instinctive
skepticism about the United States.
In the
days after a report linked him to the scandal, he
sought to ride it out by criticizing his own
government's key foreign-policy initiatives. He
suddenly developed doubts about the nuclear deal
between India and the United
States that had been announced last July. He
implied he was being "targeted" because he had
opposed the war in Iraq.
As such, when he
was removed and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took
charge of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA),
there was reassurance that course correction had
been effected. After all, substantial sections of
the Congress party and of the innately
conservative Indian Foreign Service (IFS) - once
described by a British high commissioner in Delhi
as more wedded to 19th-century British diplomatic
protocol than were the British themselves - shared
Natwar's misgivings about the US and his penchant
for conspiracy theories. The last thing India
needed was another loose cannon as foreign
minister.
In the past eight months, the
prime minister has hand-held the deal with the US,
which allows India access to civilian nuclear
technology while legitimizing its nuclear weapons.
In this period, Indian foreign policy has become
unifocal - fixated on the nuclear deal to the
exclusion of everything else. It has steered clear
of an activist role or strong statements on Iran
or Central Asia or even Pakistan, so as not to
rock any boats, domestically or in Washington.
Manmohan and Shyam Saran, foreign
secretary and the most senior civil servant in the
MEA, have run the ship between them. The chemistry
is obvious. The prime minister is a quiet,
understated man. "Instinctively Manmohan prefers
dealing with a bureaucrat than with an
unpredictable politician," a public-affairs
analyst in Delhi said. "In the short run, his
dependence on Saran has paid off."
Yet
that short run may just have finished. Initial
relief at not having an adventurist foreign
minister is now yielding ground to sober
realization. An aspiring power such as India
cannot find an effective politician who can be
trusted with diplomacy and yet tailor its messages
for domestic audiences - particularly the
four-party Left Front, which supports Manmohan's
Congress-led government in parliament, but is
intensely hostile to Uncle Sam.
As some
point out, even the nuclear deal is beginning to
feel the need for a full-time foreign minister.
"Dealing through Shyam Saran was fine when the
nitty-gritty of the bilateral agreement was being
hammered out, but now the need is to woo other
countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group," a
former diplomat said.
These are the
potential spoiler nations. Countries such as New
Zealand and traditionally non-proliferationist
Northern European states are not too happy
exempting India from the Non-Proliferation Treaty
and its international regime of nuclear controls.
Brazil and South Africa, two middle-ranking powers
that gave up the nuclear weapon to gain civilian
technology, now see India walking away with a
windfall.
These countries need to be
wooed, offered economic and other carrots by
India, spoken to politician-to-politician,
minister-to-minister. This is where India is
beginning to miss an authoritative ministerial
voice in South Block.
"There has to be a
senior and influential minister who enjoys the
confidence of the prime minister to translate
national policies into action," said G
Parthasarathy, former high commissioner to
Pakistan. "The prime minister is just too busy to
micro-manage the conduct of foreign policy."
Yet it will be the prime minister who will
use the India-South Africa-Brazil summit in
September to bring those countries around on the
nuclear issue. Anand Sharma, minister of state (a
junior minister's rank) in the MEA, recently
visited South Africa and Brazil, but he was
probably too lightweight for effective lobbying.
The Pakistani foreign minister sought to
score a point a few months ago when asked about
peace talks with India. "Whom do I speak to?"
Khurshid M Kasuri asked.
India is also at
a transition stage in terms of entering economic
partnerships with regional groupings such as the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN),
BIMSTEC (Bangladesh-India-Myanmar-Sri
Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation) or even the
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
(SAARC). Negotiations here require both political
capital and day-to-day handling.
As things
stand, Manmohan has two options before him. First:
find a foreign minister from among senior Congress
party politicians. There has been talk in Delhi of
Finance Minister P Chidambaram being given the
job. Who then will become finance minister?
Congress sources say Manmohan has indicated
preference for former Reserve Bank of India
governor C Rangarajan, if not the deputy chair of
the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
The political left is certain to veto
these reformists and will probably recommend
Pranab Mukherjee, a veteran politician who was
finance minister in the 1980s and is now defense
minister. Unlike Rangarajan or Ahluwalia - or even
Arjun Sengupta, another former economic bureaucrat
whose name is also heard, though feebly -
Mukherjee has an autonomous power center in
Delhi's politics and is less likely to let the
prime minister have his way in the Finance
Ministry.
Also, a shuffle at the foreign
and finance ministers' level cannot occur without
larger upheaval, without other ministers being
dropped or brought in. This will stoke ambitions
in the Congress and may prove a bigger political
headache for Manmohan and for Sonia Gandhi,
Congress party president.
"I think
Manmohan Singh has a real problem," a retired IFS
officer said. "On crucial issues like the nuclear
deal or economic integration in Asia, a foreign
minister who has his own political ambitions could
be a major embarrassment. And younger ministers
like [Law Minister] Kapil Sibal may lack the
stature and political clout to get an
inter-ministerial consensus on foreign policy
decisions."
Manmohan's second option is to
abide by technocrats. After Saran retires in
November, Manmohan has the option, government
sources say, of moving him to the Prime Minister's
Office as "diplomatic adviser" and making him, in
effect, the foreign minister. If this happens, it
will institutionalize a process that has some
precedent.
Particularly after the nuclear
tests of 1998, Indian prime ministers have tended
to route foreign-policy interventions through the
national security adviser (NSA), bypassing
potential obstacles or delays in the Foreign
Office. However, the current NSA, M K Narayanan,
is an internal-security specialist. He was saddled
with the NSA's job as well when J N Dixit died in
January 2005.
Strategic affairs and global
politics are not Narayanan's forte. This has
created a vacancy for a "diplomatic adviser to the
prime minister". Sources say Ronen Sen, India's
ambassador to the United States, was offered the
job a few weeks ago, but turned it down. Now the
bets are on Saran.
Ashok Malik
is a journalist based in New Delhi. He can be
contacted at malikashok@gmail.com.
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