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India, UK ties at its best
When Tony Blair stood up at 10 Downing Street and called India "the world's greatest democracy" there was a palpable sense that he was going out of the way to make an extra effort for Indo-UK ties.
When Tony Blair stood up at 10 Downing Street and called India "the world's greatest democracy" — did he mean largest or was he putting us ahead of the US? — there was a palpable sense that the British Prime Minister was going out of the way to make an extra effort for Indo-UK ties. As he himself said, India and the UK now have better relations than at any point in the last 50 years or so.
The brief meeting with Manmohan Singh over a light lunch at Downing Street was meant to be an opportunity for the two men to get to know each other — they had only met briefly as part of a group earlier. It went off better than anyone had expected and it is a measure of the new closeness between the two countries that rather than discuss Indo-UK relations, they discussed the state of the world.
Iraq did not dominate the discussion. Britain has accepted that India will disagree and agreed to let that be. Instead, they spoke about Western concerns over the rest of the region including Iran over which India is believed to have some influence. Blair also welcomed India's efforts to help in the restoration of normal life in Afghanistan.
On Indo-Pak relations, Blair welcomed the Manmohan Singh government's efforts at resuming the dialogue but the Indian Prime Minister warned that the peace process would be derailed if the cross-border terrorism continued. Singh's concerns about terrorism probably accounted for Blair's unusually strong denunciation of terrorist violence in South Asia at his press conference.
India had been agitated by what it regarded as the ambiguity of recent remarks made by British ministers regarding the reconstitution of the Security Council. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in particular, had seemed to be backtracking on Britain's commitment to help India become a permanent member of the reconstituted Security Council.
Before Singh met Blair, Natwar Singh asked Straw if Britain had changed its position. Straw insisted that it had not and said that the confusion was because some remarks he made at Chathan House had been misreported. Nevertheless, Singh raised the subject forcefully with Blair who assured him that there was no change in the UK's stand.
Afterwards, Manmohan Singh said — in private — that he had been impressed by Blair's enthusiasm and obvious sincerity. Asked by a cynical observer if he hadn't been too easily taken in by Blair's famous charm, Singh smiled. "If I think somebody is sincere, then I continue to hold that view till it is proved otherwise," he said.
