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Sonia meets Cheney, lauds India caucus

Aziz Haniffa
India Abroad Correspondent in Washington

Indian National Congress president Sonia Gandhi was feted by the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. She also met Vice-President Dick Cheney at the White House for 25 minutes, during which they expressed mutual satisfaction over the blossoming US-India ties.

Gandhi, who arrived in Washington earlier in the day from New York, was a smash hit at the luncheon hosted in her honour in Room 340 -- the Veterans Subcommittee hearing room in the House cannon office building -- and sponsored by the Confederation of Indian Industry, with over 30 US lawmakers and their aides giving her a sustained standing ovation at the end of her 15-minute speech.

An appointment scheduled for the afternoon with former first lady and now Democratic senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton was cancelled because Clinton was otherwise occupied on the Senate floor.

Sources said her meeting with Cheney was extremely 'friendly and cordial' and after the exchange of pleasantries, there was a brief but substantive discussion of bilateral, regional and global issues and an agreement on 'the commonalties of issues' between New Delhi and Washington.

Cheney, according to the sources, reiterated President Bush's and his commitment to further Indo-US ties and accelerate the momentum set by the erstwhile Clinton administration, particularly last year, when Clinton visited India in March and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee paid a reciprocal visit in September.

Both Cheney and Gandhi also welcomed the upcoming summit between India and Pakistan and expressed hope that the Pakistani leader, General Pervez Musharraf, and Vajpayee could set the tone for some tangible confidence-building measures that would led to the resolution of the Kashmir imbroglio.

Gandhi, 54, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, was accompanied to the meeting with Cheney by former Union finance minister Manmohan Singh and former minister of state for external affairs K Natwar Singh, the sources said.

In the evening, Gandhi, who took to politics only in 1998, was accorded a dinner reception by Indian Ambassador Lalit Mansingh at his residence.

Senior Bush administration officials from the state department and the National Security Council, leading US lawmakers, senior embassy officials and NRIs affiliated with the Congress party were among the invitees.

Mansingh had earlier been unable to attend the India caucus luncheon in Gandhi's honour because he was busy hosting National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, who was in the US for meetings with his counterpart Condoleezza Rice and other senior US officials.

In her speech to the India caucus, the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, who in 1968 married Rajiv Gandhi -- former Indian prime minister who was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber in 1991 while campaigning in Tamil Nadu -- started off by saying that "it was Porfirio Diaz, I think, who bemoaned Mexico's fate of being so far away from God and so close to America".

"Well, India has given the world four religions, welcomed Christianity in the 4th century AD and has the world's second largest Muslim population," she said. "We are entitled to turn Diaz around and cry out how close we are to God but so far away from the United States."

"But thanks to this congressional caucus," Gandhi continued, "the distance between India and America, both geographical and otherwise, is being bridged. To all of you, I bring the greetings and appreciation of my countrymen and countrywomen."

India and the United States "are now more deeply engaged than ever before in fruitful dialogue across a broad spectrum of issues", she declared.

"To be sure, in some areas we do have different perspectives. That we have differences is perhaps inevitable. What is promising is the conviction in both countries that we work cooperatively in areas of mutual agreement without allowing our differences to come in the way, while pursuing the track of discussions and dialogue to narrow these differences."

She said, "Peace in South Asia is of paramount concern to all of us. It is of even greater concern, I know, ever since India and Pakistan went overtly nuclear three years ago."

Thus, Gandhi said, it is imperative that at the Musharraf-Vajpayee summit, both India and Pakistan realise the urgent need "to arrive at a set of enforceable and verifiable confidence-building measures to minimise the risks of nuclear conflict".

"In Jammu & Kashmir," she said, "we have always been sensitive to the sentiments of the people. The state enjoys a special status in the Indian Union under Article 370 of our Constitution."

Gandhi asserted that "cross-border terrorism has to cease, and the answer to this very complex issue will have to be found in the framework of electoral and multi-party democracy".

She emphasised that Jammu & Kashmir "is in an integral part of India and vital for India's secular ethos".

Noting that New Delhi's relationship with Beijing had turned around after a long period of estrangement following the 1962 conflict, Gandhi said, "We are extremely concerned about the export of nuclear and missile technology from China to Pakistan."

She also provided an update on India's economic liberalisation process that was conceived and set forth in 1991 by Manmohan Singh. But "it is ironical that the anti-globalisation sentiment is spreading in the developed countries just when countries like India seek to integrate themselves closer with the global economic, financial and trading system," she added.

She slammed the industrial North, saying, "We are also concerned that even though all countries claim to be committed to a rule-based multilateral system of free and fair trade, the actual record on the part of the advanced nations is one of non-fulfilment of obligations under international agreements."

Gandhi also said that India's myriad problems "do not allow any magic mantra. We need a mixed economy that integrates public investment, especially in the infrastructure and social sectors, with private initiative across the whole economy."

Politically, she said, "one of the great accomplishments in the past decade and a half is the empowerment of institutions of governance in rural India". She noted that among the "over three million elected representatives in these institutions, one-third or a full one million are women".

"Socially, there is a fundamental change, particularly in the populous northern region, where democracy is giving voice, representation and power to communities that have been outside the mainstream for centuries," she said. "Our affirmative action programmes have empowered the weaker sections of our society in an unprecedented manner."

In her speech, Gandhi lauded "the wonderfully gifted and extraordinarily talented Indian diaspora", which "is contributing to enriching American technological, scientific, academic, corporate and cultural life".

Rep Jim McDermott, Washington Democrat and co-chair of the India caucus, who had invited Gandhi to lunch with caucus members when he heard that she would be visiting the US, said, "I think it is vitally important that [the US] Congress meet the leaders in India in order to open dialogue and enhance our friendship."

"Mrs Gandhi's visit to the United States was a great opportunity for us to further Indo-American relationships through personal relationships," he added.

McDermott praised Gandhi as a "thoughtful and accomplished leader" who, he said, "has guided the Congress party to victories in recent elections... Mrs Gandhi's visit has been timed perfectly to give a great boost" to the US-India relationship, he said.

The Republican co-chair of the Caucus, Rep Ed Royce of California, said, "This is a very exciting time in the relationship between the United States and India, with a series of visits by high-level officials from both countries.

"Recent interactions between the United States and India under the Bush administration give us much reason to be optimistic about the direction of this relationship," he added.

Royce, who had met Gandhi as part of a congressional delegation that visited India earlier this year in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Gujarat, declared that "Sonia Gandhi is fully committed to a strong Indo-US relationship. Her visit gives us an opportunity to hear the opposition perspective, which helps further our understanding of India."

Gandhi, however, scrupulously avoided making any digs at the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government ruling India, nor did she make a pitch for the Congress party in her remarks or her interaction with Cheney.

EARLIER REPORTS:
Sonia Gandhi arrives in Washington, to meet Cheney
Sonia woos NRIs in New York
Sonia Gandhi arrives in New York

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