Kuldip Nayar tipped to be foreign minister

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

The Gujral government is seriously considering appointing journalist Kuldip Nayar as India's foreign minister. This move follows the hostile reaction to the prime minister's visit to New York last month to address the United Nations general assembly. Currently, Gujral holds the external affairs portfolio.

During the trip, Gujral also met US President Bill Clinton and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief. On his return to India, several newspapers had criticised his US visit, claiming the Pakistan premier had scored over him in the Indo-Pak dialogue.

According to senior external affairs ministry officials, upset by these negative reports, Gujral vent his spleen on his advisors in the prime minister's office. Thereafter, the prime minister began toying with the idea of appointing as a full-fledged foreign minister -- not a minister of state -- a media personality who would help bolster his image.

The search for a foreign minister apparently intensified after adverse criticism about Queen Elizabeth's visit to India. Gujral is reportedly livid with foreign media reports about the queen's visit that show India in bad light.

The search has zeroed down to Nayar, a senior journalist who worked as Lal Bahadur Shastri's information officer and had a stint as India's high commissioner to the UK during the National Front government's term in office. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha recently.

Perhaps Nayar's most important qualification is that he belongs to the Saturday Club which the prime minister and his buddies attend every week at the capital's India International Centre. If he is picked for the job, Nayar will be the third member of the club picked by Gujral to work with him; the other two being N N Vohra, principal secretary in the government, and S D Muni, India's ambassador to Laos.

The current topic of discussion at Saturday Club meetings is the creation of a National Security Council. The prime minister might appoint former bureaucrats and retired armed forces personnel to the Council.