Gianiji had crafted his moves with the meticulous planning of a chess grandmaster. He did not know whether a checkmate was feasible, as his time was running out, but he wanted Rajiv Gandhi to smell the fear of loss. A fascinating excerpt from K C Singh's The Indian President: An Insider's Account of the Zail Singh Years.
PM Modi seems to be gradually ending India's strategic ambiguity
'It seems that the BJP in its desire to catapult Modi onto the international stage, knowing the image deficit due to visa denials, has caused unhappiness in Tamil Nadu, uncertainty in Bangladesh and a churning in Pakistan that Sharif may or may not be able to control,' says Ambassador K C Singh.
'Devyani -- she is a public servant and her personal life has already received far too much attention -- and her ambitious father now need to retreat to the background so that wiser diplomatic heads restore sanity to India-US relations as India prepares for parliamentary elections,' says Ambassador K C Singh.
The Geneva agreement is a signal, which at least Saudi Arabia and Israel are so reading, that normalisation of relations between US and Iran is not merely about the nuclear fuel cycle, says K C Singh.
'India and China are at new inflection points, domestically and internationally. India needs to throw up a new leader whose vision is clear, experience laden with wisdom and articulation brimming with restraint and tolerance,' says Ambassador K C Singh.
'India and China are at new inflection points, domestically and internationally. India needs to throw up a new leader whose vision is clear, experience laden with wisdom and articulation brimming with restraint and tolerance,' says Ambassador K C Singh.
India must not succumb to the argument that by moving ahead to normalise relations between India and Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif's hands would be strengthened in dealing with those who don't want peace. This is not to suggest, like the BJP, that our Pakistan policy must be an all or nothing approach, implying that talks with Pakistan must straight away be shelved. The need is for a calibrated approach, says K C Singh.
'Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may be anxious for a farewell visit to Washington in October,' says retired Ambassador K C Singh, 'but bending backwards on America's PRISM policy is going to earn him scorn at home and contempt abroad.'
The push-back by Hillary Clinton was no longer available to keep the proponents of the thesis away that somehow it was India's problem that Pakistan misbehaves in Afghanistan or misbehaves at all, says K C Singh.
The Iranian people, having spoken, are asking the new administration to find a way by which sanctions can be rolled back and civility and normalcy can return to Iran's engagement with the world, says K C Singh
The Supreme Court needs to step in and order an independent inquiry into the whole IPL scandal, conflicts of interest between office-holders of the BCCI, team-owners of the IPL and even members and captain of the Indian team, says KC Singh
Pakistan must get to the root of the conspiracy to eliminate Indian prisoners while in judicial custody, says K C Singh
Prime Minister opportunistically engaged flawed leaders and regressed into NAM rhetoric during his UN visit, says K C Singh.
The home minister's visit to Pakistan can either open the path to a serious re-engagement or regress us to the rhetoric of the last 12 years, writes K C Singh.
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