 |
| Sushma Swaraj Speaking at 71st UNGA |
Discussion on External Affairs Minister's speech at the United Nations General Assembly(UNGA). The participants are Shashank, former foreign secretary and Mahendra Ved, Senior journalist.
The diplomatic dialogue between India ans Pakistan has gone to the United Nations General Assembly. India has taken its campaign of isolating Pakistan to the UN and the external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj urged the world community to hold countries that nurture, peddle and export terrorism to account. She has said that unified approach is needed. It is possible but there is need for political will. Ambassador Shashank, all of us have heard the speech. How do you react to it?
Well, in the first part, the minister has talked more about the sustainable development goals, about India's plans to meet the targets set by the United Nations and the international community, also about the climate change conference; how India would be ratifying the commitments which it has made at the conference by 2nd October 2016. So I think there are all these various important issues relating to the international community and the UN goals and she has spent good amount of time.
She spent more time on issues that confront the world, and sort of marrying India's national priorities with the international issues like climate change, gender equality, what India has done in last two years and what it expects to be part of the world community. There were so many issues that were dealt with and she has said that for India these issues matter because India is 1/5th of the world community. So India has been taking these things very very seriously.
She has pointed out the importance of India to the world community in its own way like large population and the progress which is being made rapidly in India and whatever has been done particularly in the last two years, she brought it to the notice of world community and it was cheered by many of the listeners.
Particularly her announcement that India will be signing the Climate Change pact on Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. So the basic message is that India is in tune with the world community and wants to be part of the solution.
But in a very neat manner she also started the speech while laying the foundation, for what she wants to concentrate later on I.e., the terrorism which is being nurtured and it is being exported by Pakistan to all over the world. She also talked about the 16th anniversary of 9/11 attacks, some more attacks in New York city and she has expressed her solidarity with those people who have suffered.
Brussles, Istanbul, Dhaka and then comes Patankhot, Uri etc. So she linked all of them together and laid everything that either the terrorists came out of Pakistan or they went back to Pakistan for shelter after committing the terrorist acts, Which makes it very difficult for anybody to counter these things.
So I was wondering; taking a larger issue Prime Minister Nawaz Sheriff spoke and then there was this right of reply exercises by India by the lady diplomat Eenam Gambhir and she spoke very very stinging. Mrs Swaraj speech also would be followed by the right to reply by Pakistan?
Actually Nawaz Shariff had first raised the bilateral issue before the UN General Assembly which was not really necessary because we have Shimla agreement and so many other agreements which provide for bilateral dialogue so India had the right to reply which was given in very stinging fashion, very clear cut fashion by our young diplomat. She received kudos from many people in India by the way she had spoken, like Takshashila becoming ivy league of terrorism. Very very stinging words, no doubt about that absolutely. But the right of reply is something that the listeners would like to understand.
This went to the Pakistani side also that when Mrs Swaraj spoke about the Indian response to what Pakistan PM had said and that there were no conditions which had been put by India, I think India was every time asking Pakistan to propitiate and every time they responded by sending more terrorists to India. So she made that very clear. So Pakistan also got a right of reply and they gave their right of reply through one of their officers in the mission. But then the Indian officer Eenam Gambhir once again gave right of reply to that right of reply because that was misleading the General Assembly and the UN members. So therefore Indian foreign secretary had to give another right of reply to that right of reply given by Pakistan. So this is how matters are placed in the proper prospective. Since these things are going to the records of the UN General Assembly, and if something is left uncontested, that means India had nothing more to say that and India had taken a large view of the friendly relations with the Pakistanis whereas the Pakistanis were carrying out all these terrorist activities in India.
So the question is that in India the feelings were so agitated against Pakistan and against terrorism brought by it into India that the Indian representative in the United Nations had to very clearly point out the flawed arguments put forward by the Pakistani delegates.
And for all that, Mrs Swaraj's speech, I hope you will agree with me, was very sober and very very to the point, very persuasive, very direct and yet it was a very sharp response to what Pakistan has been saying. And no wonder Prime Minister himself had said that it was firm, effective and very fine articulation. So it is really like UN General Assembly has become metal ground (71st session) that I suppose there's much more to come and we, India have decided to review the Indus water treaty and we are not withdrawing if I am correct on that?
We have not reviewed it so far. It has been allowed to continue, lackadaisical manner I would say by the previous Government so far. Because in 1965 we had a war with Pakistan under the law of treaties, it could be considered this treaty as null and void after the war. In 1971 again we had a war, we had a war agreement called Shimla Agreement, or even Tashkent Declaration. None of these things talked about Indus water treaty. It means that India water treaty was null and void.
Is it time bound?
Treaty may not be time bound. But any treaty is bound by the question of relationship between the two countries. If two countries come to actual war, then all the treaties are perished after that. Then you have to renegotiate, resume new relationships from the very beginning. This is what we did for trade relationship, this is what we did for visas and for pilgrims and all the other kind of things. But somehow or the other since we were not able to use all the water which was there under the Indus water treaty, so it was always felt why review it, when you cannot use water which has been allotted to you even though it may be unfair that you got only 20% of the water and 80% of the water went to Pakistan. Now that question has more important because now you link it with a continuous warfare waged by Pakistan and sending terrorists into India. So Prime Minister Modi has put it very aptly that "Blood and water cannot flow together". So we are reviewing it.
But you are reviewing it and you want to take your share of water?
We want to take our share of water and secondly we would like to remove the...
Then how would that be done ?
Well it will mean that there are three Eastern rivers and India is entitled to full utilization of the water of these three Rivers. So they are not doing that and these rivers Ravi etc., they are flowing into Pakistan and that water is going to them. Whereas many of our Indian states like Haryana, Delhi are denied this water that should have come to them. But clearly because we have not been able to use it as a state, as inter-state mechanisms have not been very successful, and matters are all the time in the Supreme Court, so this being similar issue as these are very complicated issues even within a country, States are fighting for their rights to water. Therefore what is happening is this water in the Indus water system is all flowing down to Pakistan. We are using for example we can generate 18,000 MW of Power whereas we are generating only 3,000 MW and the new projects which are there in the pipeline would still take it only to 11,000 MW after 10 years! So we must go ahead strongly because this is for the benefit for the people of Kashmir and for the benefit of people elsewhere in North India.
Pakistan has said you cannot unilaterally walk away and they have said that they might want to go to world court?
They will go wherever they want to go. But the point is that they have had a very wonderful veto over the utilization of this water by India and of the any benefits to be given to the Kashmiri people. So they have been trying to convey signal to Kashmiri people that we will not only send you terrorists but we will also not allow you to use any of the water of the Indus River system. So I think this is a very bad signal and we need to get away from that. So that is not withdrawing as such. Then I hope that they will review them and take a decision not to extend these things unilaterally to Pakistan if they are not able to reciprocate and they don't respond to your friendly gestures and only do it with terrorism.
The other issue is Most Favored Nation (MFN) which took so many years to come through. And now we are reviewing it. As such there was not much trade ?
No, trade is very little. Very often this helps because the MFN treatment means that whatever treatment we extend to any other country, we have to extend similar treatment to Pakistan also. This we have unilaterally agreed to it. Pakistan has not given to us. Pakistan's adherence to the SAFTA (South Asian Free Trade Association) that gradually they would move towards free trade. So not only MFN but extend it to free trade area also. But even after 12 years of that agreement in SAARC summit in Islamabad, nothing has been done. In fact nothing has been done even on the MFN. They even don't want to call it MFN. They were using all kinds of other names that it is not the favored nation but it is something like a normal treatment to India. And that also they have not extended. Therefore it is very essential that a signal should go to Pakistan and Pakistani people and to our Indian people also that while Pakistanis look like us, but there is some problem. Whenever you want to go extend your hand of friendship, they send few more terrorists to us, initially to damage our civilian assets and now they are damaging even the military assets and this is deliberate posture. Bahadur Ali was mentioned specifically, then after that there were other terrorists who have been arrested by the BSF and by the other forces in India and they have clearly said and they are live like Kasab who was caught alive. Otherwise Pakistan would have said that look they are all Indian people and they are unnecessarily spoiling the name of the Pakistan like how they were trying to do initially with Kasab like disowning him.
I was little amused when I saw in the news in Pakistani media this morning when Mr. Sartar Aziz who is the foreign affairs adviser to his Prime Minister said that let international probe into how Uri attack happened. At the same time his own defense minister Khawaja Asif said that it was an inside job by India. So there is contradiction in the way they are reacting to Uri and now one does get a feeling that they are a little unnerved particularly about these things about India isolating them. Now coming back to Mrs. Swaraj speech, she has made two other important points: One is that convention on terrorism. She says that UN should adopt this convention. Now the basic thing is on terrorism. What is terrorism? That itself, the definition itself has been disputed.
Well, what has happened is that all along Pakistan and many other countries have been referring to good terrorists and bad terrorists. American themselves and Chinese also, they have been trying to negotiate with the good Taliban by differentiating them from bad Taliban in order to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan. But as regards to Pakistan, for them the good Taliban are the only ones that they are supporting who are destabilizing Afghanistan. So therefore India is consistently saying that it is not good Taliban or bad Taliban, good terrorists or bad terrorists; just that terrorist is a terrorist. And once you adopt this convention, and take it into domestic legislation, then those countries which have well laid out legislation that any of these kind of international sanctions have to be brought into the national regime and they have to impose sanctions against countries which help terrorists. Now we will also have to do it. For the time being, we don't have any specific measures which you take against countries spreading terrorism.
And one more point that Mrs Swaraj made was that the approach of the world community should be unified to fight terrorism and if somebody is not willing to join this thing, he should be isolated. You have Pakistan which say that they themselves are the victims of terrorism.
I would say that it is not only Pakistan which has been reluctant to take action against terrorists but there is also China which is a permanent member in the UN security council and whenever even under the Security Council regulations, under their committee on terrorism, certain people have been named. But China has been always working against naming of these people being declared as terrorists.
This 71st session of UN General Assembly, their priorities were Syria, Korea and other things. Do you think this debate between India and Pakistan, has it made good mark ?
I think it is more for the bilateral purposes in India and in Pakistan and as regards to United Nations more for record that yes, this issue was raised by Pakistan and India gave a very befitting reply to Pakistan. And so once again we will have to resolve this issue bilaterally only.
No comments:
Post a Comment