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Many others in Congress more eligible to be PM: Sonia

Indian National Congress president Sonia Gandhi rounded off her two-day visit to Washington on Thursday with what she described as 'extremely fruitful discussions' with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at the White House and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

She also addressed senior Bush administration officials, heads of think tanks, US lawmakers, congressional staffers and journalists at a power luncheon sponsored by the Confederation of Indian Industry.

At the end of a hectic day, Gandhi was also at hand to inaugurate the 19th annual convention of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, the largest and most influential international medical group in the country, followed by a brief press conference with the Indian media.

On Wednesday, she had met Vice-President Dick Cheney at the White House and was also feted by the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans on Capitol Hill.

Both at the CII function and the AAPI convention as well as later at the press conference, Gandhi was poised, self-assured and confident of her answers and gave a stellar performance, which was also laced with a superb sense of humour.

Her performance elicited a consensus among many who attended one of the several events where she spoke that she had come a long way since her visit to Washington in 1993. During that visit in connection with a Rajiv Gandhi Foundation fundraiser, she hardly spoke and appeared nervous and rather intimidated by the attention she received.

Gandhi said her discussions with Rice and Armitage covered "a very large canvas of issues of mutual interest of both our countries.

"We discussed the new friendship between our two countries, we discussed bilateral matters, regional issues in our part of the world, global issues."

She was accompanied by former Union finance minister Manmohan Singh and former minister of state for external affairs K Natwar Singh at the meeting with Rice.

Gandhi also acknowledged that the upcoming summit between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan had figured prominently in her talks with Rice and Armitage.

Singh chimed in to say that in the discussions with Armitage, there had also been a discussion, in addition to several other issues, on "the pace of economic reform in India and also the future of international trade negotiations".

Gandhi declared, "It is true that we have been received extremely well by the administration."

The administration certainly pulled out the stops to accommodate her, not only scheduling appointments with the vice-president, Rice and Armitage, but also providing her with Secret Service protection and an armoured bulletproof limousine to complement the Special Protection Group security.

She was slated to garland the Mahatma Gandhi statue opposite the Indian embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, but the SPG vetoed the idea, saying this open-air event could pose a security risk.

But she was in her element at the press conference. When a reporter asked if she had any advice for Vajpayee in his talks with Musharraf on the Kashmir imbroglio, she replied: "In India we normally don't give advice to elders."

"But the prime minister certainly has our goodwill -- both the prime minister of India and President Musharraf -- have our goodwill, have our support in this initiative and any initiative, which will bring peace back to Jammu and Kashmir," she said.

When another reporter inquired how badly she wanted to be prime minister, Gandhi quipped, "At the moment, I don't see any vacancy, and in any case, let us see once the elections are held."

"First of all," she explained, "the Congress party will have to be voted into power, then the elected members of Parliament will have to go to their leaders, and as I have said on a number of occasions during the trip, besides myself, there are a good number of colleagues who can be far more eligible for prime ministership."

Gandhi also spoke of the resurgence of the Congress and its recent electoral victories in three of the five states that went to the polls in May, and noted that "we are working hard to ensure that our party gains strength in more and more states within the country.

"We have taken a number of steps also within our party, for instance, we have introduced reservations for women -- 32 per cent reservations. We have also had in our party elections to the presidentship and this was a massive exercise which was undertaken."

"I don't think there is another party in India, which has had elections for their president. So we take great pride in that," she added.

Gandhi also spoke of the committee appointed under Singh "to look into financial transparency in the party and our party activities", and said the report had been unanimously approved by the working committee, "so we shall go ahead."

Asked if her daughter and son would enter politics, Gandhi said, "As I have said before, both my son and daughter are interested in what goes on around them and naturally in the politics of our country. But they are not at the moment interested in taking active part in politics."

"All the same," she acknowledged, "it is their choice, whether they want to be active or not [in politics], but at the moment I don't see any such possibility."

When it was pointed out how popular Priyanka was when she campaigned with her in Amethi, Gandhi said, "Yes, she was. She managed my whole campaign in my constituency.

"She does keep in touch with my constituency, but more at a level of helping children and women and not too much in the political side," Gandhi said.

But she reiterated, "I am not ruling out anything. I don't know, the decision will not be mine. As I said earlier, I have made my choice, my husband made his choice. My son and daughter had been brought up in a fairly independent way and it is therefore for them to decide what they want in their life."

Earlier, her preamble to her speech at the CII-organised event was laced with humour, ribbing Americans about the presidential election in November that was bogged down in Florida, the power crisis in California, and the recent crossover by Republican Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont to the ranks of independents, which led to the GOP having to concede majority control of the Senate to the Democrats.

Perhaps it is no secret that she was not the author of the speech, but to her credit, her delivery was impeccable and left the audience duly impressed that she had indeed metamorphosed into an astute speaker.

After some opening remarks about the commonalities between India and America, Gandhi said: "In recent months, the canvas of commonality has expanded. During your recent presidential elections, many in India felt that we should offer you our expertise in electoral technology. And with what is happening in California, we can now offer you our expertise in managing power cuts and with what is happening in Washington, our expertise in dealing with political defections."

Sonia in the US: The complete coverage

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