Wanted: A foreign minister

What has been lost in the maze of allegations made against former foreign minister Natwar Singh by the Congress and vice-versa following the RS Pathak report is the fact that India hasn’t had a foreign minister since Singh was forced to step down over six months ago.

In this period, foreign policy has largely been run by the PMO with overall direction from 10, Janpath. At high-profile international meets, the absence of an Indian foreign minister has been acutely felt. Foreign secretary Shyam Saran and the minister of state in the external affairs ministry, Anand Sharma, have been the spokesmen for Indian foreign policy at a time when a robust and visible foreign minister has been badly needed to articulate India’s foreign policy across a swathe of critical issues: the Indo-US nuclear deal, the stalled peace process with Pakistan, the crisis in the Middle-East, the growing relationship with China and ASEAN and the upcoming election of the new United Nations Secretary-General where India's official nominee, Shashi Tharoor, faces an uphill battle.

Now that the Pathak report is out, the PMO must move swiftly to appoint a senior, credible foreign minister and pursue an active foreign policy on several fronts.

First, the Indo-US nuclear deal. In an extraordinary attack on the deal, The Economist, reflecting hawkish Western policymaking opinion, wrote in a recent issue: “The damage done by George Bush’s proposed nuclear deal with India gets worse and worse. Already weakened by the nuclear antics of Iran and North Korea, the web of treaties and controls that seeks to halt the bomb’s spread is starting to unravel. Congress, hitherto a staunch defender of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and all it stands for, is poised to allow America’s laws to be amended to accommodate civilian nuclear trade with India, despite that country's bomb-building. The Bush administration defends its India deal as good for combating global warming, good for jobs in America. All that is debatable. But its claim that the nuclear deal will be a net gain in the fight against proliferation is pure nonsense.”

Such a subjective and misleading interpretation needs to be combated robustly. Instead of India’s headless Ministry of External Affairs defending the deal in capitals around the world and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, it has been left to the foreign relations committees of both the US Senate and the House of Representatives to overwhelmingly endorse the deal. The result: both US lawmaking houses are almost certain to ratify the deal with very minor changes. But the absence of a foreign minister articulating India’s point of view has been a serious handicap.

The peace process with Pakistan has been another casualty of a headless MEA. The terror strike on Mumbai and a general mood of distrust would anyway have stalled the peace process, but the absence of a foreign minister means India's response is slow and late —and often lacks coherence and direction. Increasingly, the national security advisor, MK Narayanan, a former chief of the intelligence Bureau (IB), has had to chip in with statements where security and foreign policy overlap.

In any sophisticated and nuanced response to Pakistan's involvement with terror strikes on Indian soil and the consequences of that on the peace process and further CBMs, the foreign minister is the pivot around whom revolves the national security advisor, the foreign secretary and officials from the PMO. Without this pivot, India’s policy on Pakistan will continue to meander.

The third critical issue is the current Middle-East crisis, where Hezbollah has for the first time in decades shown that there is an Arab militia, armed and organised, to resist the might of the Israeli army and airforce. India’s deepening military relationship with Israel and its historical support for both Lebanon and Palestine make it tricky to craft a purposeful response to the current conflict. Again, an experienced foreign minister could play a useful role in using India’s developing friendship with Israel and traditional ties with the Arab world to play the part of a more than a mere onlooker.

As India's economic clout grows and it debates world issues on the same table as the G-8, so should its foreign policy influence. With Natwar out, it is imperative to appoint a senior and experienced foreign minister immediately rather than wait for a mid-term cabinet reshuffle.

Email: minhazmerchant@business-leaders.com