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New Delhi, July 26: This is one confidence-building measure India is finding difficult to stomach.
Within a few hours, it will be known if the Indian foreign policy establishment can summon the nerve to position its minister next to his Pakistani counterpart, let the spotlight fall on them and set the stage for a clash of charisma.
Till late tonight, South Block officials were fighting shy of scheduling a joint media conference of Hina Rabbani Khar, the visiting Pakistani foreign minister, and S.M. Krishna. But Krishna was equally adamant that the Pakistani proposal for a joint media interaction be accepted.
In the unkind world of adjectives, the odds are stacked against SMK and in favour of HRK. Khar, at 34, is the “youngest” Pakistani foreign minister, while Krishna, 79, is the oldest minister in the Manmohan Singh ministry.
Khar carries with ease descriptions such as “stunning” and “petite”. Krishna, dapper as he is and renowned for his refined taste, has found himself in some sticky situations — some of them on public platforms and involving such mirth-inducing episodes as mixing up a UN speech.
All of which have made the minders at the foreign ministry jittery about the prospect of pitching Krishna along side Khar and letting loose packs of hacks on them at Delhi’s Hyderabad House, the venue for the talks.
Delhi, the sources added, wanted to avoid a public relations disaster. Tomorrow’s itinerary released for the media this evening did not mention a joint conference. “However, things may change tomorrow if Krishna makes the issue a matter of prestige,” said a source.
Foreign ministry insiders said Indian diplomats had spent “sleepless” nights ever since meeting Khar in Islamabad last month. That may be an exaggeration but the purple prose, quite unlike the deadpan accounts, some mandarins have deployed suggests that considerable thought had been devoted to the subject.
“She (Khar) talks as if she is in a rush. However, she will listen to you attentively with a fixated gaze into your eyes, which can get unnerving. You might initially get the impression of her interest in what you have to say being perfunctory but she can surprise you. She hangs on to every word,” said an official who interacted with her in Islamabad last month.
Another official shared what obviously is not classified information in the foreign ministry. “Khar is young and, yes, stunning. She may be new to the world of diplomacy but is picking up the nuances fast,” he said, adding that she has a good teacher in Pakistan foreign secretary Salman Basheer, who held foreign secretary-level talks with Nirupama Rao today and finalised some confidence-building measures.
Blinded by such attention to detail, many of these officials can now see only the “negatives” on this side of the pasture. They were busy recounting today how Krishna ended up reading his Portuguese counterpart’s speech at the UN Security Council early this year.
Last week, during his joint media interaction with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Krishna said Afghanistan wasn’t India’s “immediate neighbour”. Those familiar with contemporary geography may be perplexed but New Delhi considers Afghanistan as its immediate neighbour because a part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir touches the Afghan boundary.
Krishna’s critics are also not willing to forget what they feel was a “poor show by the minister” on July 15 last year in Islamabad at a joint media conference with the then Pakistan foreign minister, S.M. Qureshi.
Qureshi had compared then Indian home secretary G.K. Pillai to Jamaat-ud-Daawa chief Hafiz Saeed. Some felt Krishna failed to give a fitting riposte at the conference but others pointed out that the Indian foreign minister upheld the dignity of his post by not brawling in public with his host.
An official described Krishna and Khar’s meeting tomorrow as “a meeting of youth and enthusiasm with wisdom and experience”.
Whether the rest of the country and the world can also have a ringside view of such a confluence of qualities will be decided tomorrow.
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