Return
to Story Page
To print: Select File and then Print from your
browser's menu
Jyoti Malhotra
On January 29-30, Jaswant Singh will be leading India's ``strategic dialogue'' with the US not only as special envoy of the PM, but as External Affairs minister. `We're addressing ourselves to the substantial part of it, not with the superficial which deals with designations,' he told Jyoti Malhotra. Here are excerpts of Singh's view of the world, as he sees it from New Delhi.
When India conducted the tests in May, it did so without asking any other country. Soon after, however, we started talking to other nations. Why?
Both are perfectly explainable. There necessarily had to be a degree of confidentiality about the tests. Once that process was over and the government and the scientific community was satisfied with what had been undertaken, which was validating and updating technology, as a responsible member of the international community, we engaged in talks with various countries.
We are doing two things. One, communicating our national security interests that had persuaded us to do theessential in the form of the May tests, and two, to address ourselves to international concerns. Some of these concerns we found overstated. This really is an exchange of views with a view to harmonising them.
What are these concerns?
People have talked in terms of an arms race, an open-ended programme, a violation of international norms and the enhancement of tension. None of these are valid. India did not then or since violated any international or bilateral agreement or treaty. We have simply attempted to acquire for ourselves the needed strategic space. To talk of an arms race is to overstate the case. We have announced a voluntary moratorium and the readiness to convert it to a de jure obligation. The PM has also clearly enunciated that our aim is a limited, minimum deterrence, of no first use. There was need therefore to engage in dialogue and explain all these things.
So are we getting there?
My endeavour is to harmonise our viewpoint with those of others. If this yardstick isapplied, I would say, yes, there has been movement. There exists today a much clearer and a much better understanding of India's position. It is evident to any observer, that the strident prescriptive tones of the early days when India was told to do this, do that, is no longer there. There is movement towards a focussed discussion on three-four aspects of the consequences of the May tests.
One thing I must make clear. I am not engaging in any dialogue seeking quid pro quos, because I believe that a nation as great as India, when it takes steps in the consideration of its vital, national interest, can scarcely do so.
The US says that India must define its minimum, nuclear deterrent?
I think that already stands defined. When we talk of a minimum, nuclear deterrent, we are talking of the totality of the concept. We're not trapped in the terminology or the dead rhetoric of the Cold War years. The reality is that the Indian position cannot be equated with that of the Cold War protagonists. We believethat minimum deterrence is not a physical (thing), or a fixity in time, but a concept that defines the outline of our endeavour, and naturally, which alters with the altering security environment. So therefore for our Western interlocutors to seek a definition of the concept in Cold War rhetoric is simply not possible. After this it is necessary for us to sit together and reason the matter.
Even in a changing security environment, who is India's threat?
I have made clear repeatedly that India's programme is not country-specific. The threat is strategic, not tactical. What India has attempted to do is to enlarge the strategic space that was getting constricted, particularly after the Cold War, when the whole world had come under a nuclear security paradigm. The rest of the globe continues to adopt nuclear security either for themselves or for others, and denies to India that very strategic option. That is all India has done.
Is India attempting to enlarge the boundaries of the non-proliferationregime that exists today?
No, I'm not attempting any such game. I have said earlier, for example, that I can scarcely deny Pakistan the right which I claim for myself. That right is equal and legitimate security for all.
If from that one were to infer that there is an attempt to challenge the non-proliferation regime or to expand it, that is not so. India is not a proliferationist. We are amongst the original non-proliferationists. We continue to, civilisationally and culturally, remain so.
If countries like Iraq, Iran were to conduct tests, would you deny them their right to test?
No, this is the principle. Do you deny that nations on this earth have not the right to equal and legitimate security? But when you specify by taking names, I don't think this large question can be addressed in that fashion.
Are you concerned that there are nuclear neighbours around you?
I am concerned that there is a n-weapons world, where India continues to be told that you can't have it. But in thecase of nuclear weapons what is the neighbourhood, where the globe has shrunk? Of course India's neighbourhood is full of challenges, it is exceptional, that is the reality. And that reality carries with it its own logic, which is to expand the strategic space of India. n Is the world willing to acknowledge a nuclear India?
I don't think facts can be disinvented.
What is the government's view on attacks against minorities?
Whenever you talk about attacks against minorities, you're suggesting that this is endemic. Wherever these incidents take place, they are to be condemned outright and unequivocally, the guilty must be punished. But we mustn't give to stray incidents the category of a tendency. What has happened must be condemned. In the ministry we are addressing ourselves to this misimpression about it. As if this were happening all the time. It's a large country, if miscreants take the law into their own hands, somewhere in the land, it should not be treated as any kind of systematic attackagainst minorities.
On Pakistan, you once said that map-making in the sub-continent should cease?
I continue to believe that fifty years after independence, one must stop playing at map-making. I think what I've said is fairly explicit. What I'm aspiring to achieve is stability, and stable, defined, international boundaries.
And if one doesn't have an international boundary?
Then one must seek it.
Could you transform de jure boundaries into de facto boundaries?
I have said what I wanted to.
Even as both India and Pakistan move on to other things, like a bus service and sale of power, Islamabad continues to instigate a low-intensity war in Kashmir. Do you see a contradiction in this?
No, I don't. If there are difficulties in bilateral relations, we must address those difficulties. Relations between nations are not telescopic, unifocal, there is a wide spread of mutual concerns. The best way to address these difficulties is through engaging in discourse, dialogue,rationalising, rather than focussing on that which troubles.
Even as you engage in this dialogue, you have a war on the border..
We don't have a war, that is how you are describing it, we have issues, concerns, problems and we address ourselves to them. Simultaneously.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
------------------------------------------------------------
This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
------------------------------------------------------------