NEW DELHI: India’s opposition Congress (I) party Sunday said the “government SOS to the United States and China for help” amounted to an invitation to the subcontinent.
Condemning this “in strongest possible terms,” an all Indian Congress (I) committee spokesman MF Akbar said by doing so foreign minister Inder Kumar Gujral had “surrendered India’s right to an independent policy and granted the U.S hegemony over the subcontinent.”
India had sought the help of the United States and China Saturday in keeping the environment in the sub-continent friendly in view of Pakistan’s interference in the Border States, especially the northernmost Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Congress I, Akbar said, disapproved of Gujral telling U.S. Assistant secretary of defense Henry Rowen that America was a major power involved in the region.
“The U.S. may be a major power or a super power but it has no business to be involved in the internal affairs of our country,” he said.
Akbar said, “India wants friendship with America but not subservience. Tragically the national front government is sounding like a stooge of a superpower.”
The congress I spokesman said his party was shocked to learn that Gujral had told Rowen that “outbreak of hostilities between any two countries will also be contrary to American interests.”
Recalling as to how late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi stood up as a “fearless patriot” to the US threats to send its seventh fleet in the Indian ocean during the 1971 Indo-Pak war, Akbar said: “Today we seem to be inviting the masters of such fleets when their friends on the sub-continent are actively engaged in fomenting secessionism, especially in Punjab and Kashmir.”
Article extracted from this publication >> February 9, 1990
