The terror siege on Mumbai has shaken America. A day before US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s visit to India
McCain, Lieberman and Graham express solidarity with India
NEW DELHI: The terror siege on Mumbai has shaken America. A day before US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s visit to India, three senior American senators stopped by in the capital for a few hours to show solidarity with the government and the people of this country.
Republican presidential candidate senator John McCain, Democrat Joe Lieberman and Republican Lindsey Graham decided to stop over on their way to Bangladesh to meet prime minister Manmohan Singh and foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee.
“It was not just an attack on Mumbai but on the entire civilised world,” Lieberman told reporters on Tuesday. Clearly, the message from the senators was we are with you, we sympathise and understand your grief and anger.
“We are here to express our sorrow…to say we are with you and that we want the perpetrators to be tracked,” McCain said. “Our mission is to express solidarity and sympathy with you.”
He said the team would also visit Pakistan at the weekend to urge president Asif Ali Zardari and his government to “cooperate with India quickly and transparently”.
McCain was echoing Rice, who said in London on Monday: “I don’t want to jump to any conclusions myself on this, but I do think this is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that is what we expect (from Pakistan).” “What we are emphasising to the Pakistani government is the need to follow the evidence
wherever it leads and to do that in the most committed and firmest possible way,” she told reporters.
Rice and Britain’s foreign minister spent a good deal of time discussing the serious situation arising from the Mumbai attack.
Like the senators, Rice will also travel to Pakistan after talking to Manmohan and other Indian leaders. Her mission here is to cool temperatures and urge both governments to act with restraint.
“There is a strong resolve in the government to learn the lesson from what has happened,” Graham said. The US had offered massive help to overhaul India’s internal security.
“We will work with India and share our experience. After 9/11 we also did an overhaul of our security system. We had a new department of homeland security, we also reformed our intelligence agency with a federal central intelligence. We are working with India on counter-terrorism reforms and we want to help in every way we can,” Lieberman said.
McCain said during their meeting with the prime minister and Mukherjee, it was clear that both were clearly emotional and angry. “They are determined to overhaul the security system and make India safer,” he said. The senators agreed that the Pakistan government was not in control of the country, especially the tribal belt. They said Washington wanted to help Pakistani authorities to regain control. The US team was asked whether India should not go ahead and attack Pakistan, to which they said a firm no.
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