Think About it

Wikileaks and India

Julian Assange says that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is wrong to have questioned the authenticity of the WikiLeaks cable that stormed the Indian parliament last week. A cable in 2008 sent from a US diplomat in Delhi says that the Congress bought MPs ahead of its crucial vote of confidence. The Left had pulled out of the government over the nuclear deal with the US.

Assange says the PM's statements "seem like a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the material and it is not verified."

It is not correct to say that all these cables are mere opinions by US diplomats...that is not true. These are official correspondence sent by Ambassadors, sent in their official capacity back to Washington. Their motivations are to improve their career prospects generally. So they want Washington to understand that they are engaged in the country. They are getting good sources of information and they are reporting back.


it is very hard to understand why the US Embassy official would lie about that to Washington.


Hillary Clinton last year December spoke to the Indian government last year, perhaps to Prime Minister Singh or that level to forewarn that this material would be coming out. There is no doubt that these are bonafide reports sent by the American Ambassador back to Washington and these should be seen in that context.

A series of cables sent in September 2005 suggest that India's decision to vote with America against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had been coached by the US.


And then in April 2008, a cable reveals that an official in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), anxious about displeasing the Americans, informed them first about a visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Sent by Charge d'Affaires Steven White, the cable stresses this point.


"The official said she was providing the Embassy with this information prior to the MEA informing even other agencies within the Indian government, and before the information was to become public...Our interlocutor did not explain why the Indian government is accepting Ahmadinejad at this time, but, in giving us the forewarning, was clearly aware of U.S. sensitivities over such a visit".

In Post's estimation, the reason for agreeing to an Ahmadinejad visit at this time is to appease the UPA government's domestic Left and Muslim constituencies, i.e., asserting the independence of India's foreign policy, as well as its healthy relations with Muslim neighbors, at a time when the Communists are scoring points with the electorate by criticizing the government for becoming too close to America (and Israel) at the expense of Indian sovereignty."

"These new cables only substantiate what we have been saying all along about the yaari dosti with America...it's shameful that India can't make its own independent decisions," said Left leader Brinda Karat.
A cable dated January 14, 2008 from David Mulford, then US Ambassador to New Delhi, said, "We note that under the NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee it was easier to meet Indian officials and get business done, even in the paranoid Ministry of Home Affairs, but the Congress government has reverted to type, indulging in the sorts of Brezhnev-era controls on its people, of which Indira Gandhi would have approved of. The Nehru dynasty needs to become more like the Tata dynasty."


The Prime Minister questioned the authenticity of the cables, but the issue embarrassed the government in Parliament, and added to the perception the government is currently trying to fight - as an establishment that's permissive of front-row corruption.
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