NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not told the “truth” to theopposition about the conversations he has had with the Pakistani leadershipand the government’s policy vis-a-vis the neighbouring country had reacheda “dead end”, says former External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid.
He also feels India is losing its grip on the world in foreign policy andhas gone into the US camp with very little returns.
“Our policy on Pakistan is at a dead end. We are losing people every day.We keep saying we are giving it back to them. Years of losing civilians andsoldiers and years of saying we are giving it back to them isn’t really myidea of a good foreign policy,” Khurshid told IANS in an interview.
“Pakistan is a slippery, difficult creature and (dealing with) that is whatdiplomacy is about,” he added.
Khurshid, a senior Congress leader, said it was more than clear that “we donot have a war option with Pakistan”.
“So our failure is writ large. We have to find a solution. It is not ourjob in the opposition to give him a solution unless he consults with us.Unless he asks us what can be done. But this is not something that can beallowed to go on indefinitely,” he said.
Asked if the Congress party had any suggestions for the government, hesaid, “We have no suggestions except that he should first tell us to thetruth”.
“He has never told us the truth about Pakistan; what he has said to them,what does he do (in) meetings with them, what does he share, what do theypromise. He must share with us something before we can tell him what todo,” Khurshid said.
The former minister said India has been unable to go “beyond a certainpoint with our agenda as far as the US is concerned”.
“Yes, I certainly think we have gone into the US camp. We have got verylittle in return. We used to get concrete results from being with the(erstwhile) Soviet Union — not just with it, but with the rest of theworld that was aligned towards socialism. So I think there are major issuesthere. And we have gone in blind, we haven’t calculated properly.”
Khurshid, whose latest book “Triple Talaq: Examining Faith” has hit thestands, said India was getting global attention not because of its foreignpolicy but because of its economic potential.
“Our markets are forcing people to show interest and the Indian diaspora isplaying an increasingly important role in the world. These things give usstature.
“This is not the kind of stature we had when India provided leadership tothe Third World under (Prime Minister Jawaharlal) Nehru and the comfortIndia had when the Soviet Union stood strongly with India and India was anexponent of non-alignment,” he said.
He said Modi has shown an “enormous amount of energy of salesmanship” andhas done a reasonably effective job in this respect because of his oratory.
“I don’t think in foreign policy, if you look around the neighbourhood, ifyou look around West Asia, if you look around Europe, if you look atAfrica, I don’t think we have a consistently coordinated foreign policyposture that will be appreciated in the world. The way we are jumping fromleg to leg on Israel and Palestine, the way we are dealing with Chinavis-a-vis Japan and China itself, the way we are keeping a very lowrelationship with Russia,” he said.
Khurshid, who was External Affairs Minister in the Congress-led UnitedProgressive Alliance (UPA) government, said India was consulted on majorinternational flashpoints in the past — but that was no longer the case.
“In the past, nothing moved without India being consulted. Today, in Syrianobody wants to know what India thinks, in Iraq nobody wants to know whatIndia thinks. I think we are losing our grip on the world as far as foreignpolicy is concerned,” he said. – The New Indian Express