POLITICS: India Takes Stance, Opposes Unilateral Action on Iraq

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 12 2003 (IPS) - Bowing to pressure from both political allies and opposition and left-wing groups, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee formally stated in Parliament Wednesday that India opposes unilateral military action against Iraq and any forced regime change there.

Vajpayee refrained from naming the United States, which his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been at pains to forge a strategic alliance. But he said that ”if unilateralism prevailed,” the United Nations would be ”deeply scarred” leading to grave consequences for the world order.

He assured cheering members from both allies and the opposition in Parliament that India would ”strongly urge that no military action be taken which does not have the collective concurrence of the international community”.

Apart from a need to dodge mounting criticism at his ”middle path” approach so far, Vajpayee showed concern that war could destabilise the region and adversely affect the 3.5 million Indians working in the oil-rich countries around the Persian Gulf.

Vajpayee said the remittances of this large work force are an important source of foreign exchange for India, which also sources 60 percent of its crude oil imports from the region and regards it as a major destination for its export trade.

Of late Washington, which is anxious to have India on board its military enterprise, has taken to offering this country a major role in post-war reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

In an interview to the ‘Times of India’ newspaper published Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador in New Delhi Robert Blackwill said a regime change in Iraq would require ”a great deal of reconstruction” in which India would have the ”fundamental roles” of ”physical rebuilding” and ”the task of constructing a civil society in Iraq”.

Blackwill said in the interview, published as lead item on the newspaper’s front page, that the U.S. offer of a role for India in economic and other reconstruction work in post-war Iraq had been ”conveyed at very high levels”.

The envoy was also quoted as referring to India’s advantages such as its ”long term ties with Iraq”, which would allow it to ”be welcomed in that situation” where ”not every country will be welcomed”.

But in spite of the blandishments, Vajpayee was clear in his stand on Wednesday that ”no outside force should be allowed to change a regime. . . . use of external force by a superpower would be wrong and cannot be supported”.

Vajpayee also said that nobody would accept a ”puppet government” that is set up in Iraq by force.

Allaying apprehensions voiced by various political parties, including important constituents of the ruling coalition, Vajpayee said: ”Whatever we do will be done keeping in view the nation’s prestige and world peace.”

However, Vajpayee was non-committal to questions raised by Somnath Chatterjee, a senior parliamentarian and member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), on whether India would support military action against Iraq in case the U.N. Security Council approves it.

”No war has taken place. We will take a decision depending on the circumstances. That is what diplomacy is all about,” Vajpayee said in his reply, adding that he was certain that the Security Council would not approve of war. ”War is not an option,” he said.

Wednesday’s statement by Vajpayee headed off a parliamentary resolution against a war on Iraq that the Congress and other opposition parties were insisting on following an acrimonious and inconclusive all-party meeting on the issue convened on Monday.

Soon after the meeting, the BJP’s chief parliamentary whip Vijay Kumar Malhotra said publicly that opposition to war on Iraq was confined to ”Muslim” rather than ”Christian” countries – remarks that critics said smacked of his pro-Hindu party’s known propensity to give every issue a religious twist.

On Tuesday, India’s Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, provoked by criticism of India’s non-committal approach and accusations of a secret understanding with Washington made by several opposition members, retorted: ”Iraq is not blameless, it waged a war against Kuwait.”

Vajpayee’s statement on Wednesday tried to rectify such extreme sentiments within his party, but did not satisfy the opposition Congress party, whose spokesman Jaipal Reddy told presspersons outside Parliament that the prime minister was being evasive.

”We (India) must take the same stand as France, Germany and Russia and oppose any move to wage war on Iraq by bypassing the United Nations,” Reddy demanded.

This week’s intense debates in parliament and the statement follows rising concern voiced at public meetings in India on the Iraq issue, including one by a group of 10 members of Parliament who carried out a five-day tour of Iraq in March.

Briefing reporters on the tour Monday, a member of the team, A Soundarajan, said it was unfortunate that ”the embargo and blockade imposed (on Iraq) by the U.N. at the behest of the U.S. has resulted in the death of 1.7 million people, half of them children in the last decade due to lack of food and medication”.

In acknowledgement of the tour undertaken by the members of parliament, Vajpayee said that India is concerned at the humanitarian crisis in Iraq and has long been advocating a lifting of the sanctions imposed on that country.

Several of India’s topmost political leaders have voiced strong opposition against any military action against Iraq – these include former prime ministers Deve Gowda, Inder Kumar Gujral and former president K R Narayanan. In a joint statement, the three leaders said: ”If world leaders keep thinking and talking only about war, then war will be inevitable – with disastrous consequences for the peoples of the world.”

”People who guide the destinies of the world must work together to preserve the peace: by helping to formulate and to actively propagate all steps that would avoid a war,” they said. ”How that is best achieved must be left to the collective wisdom of the majority of members of the U.N Security Council and not any one of them howsoever powerful.”