While it has always been known that talks between Chinese and US officials are not always cordial, the stormy nature of some of these meetings is revealed in cable written by US embassy in Beijing in October 2007. The cable described the unusually aggressive and blunt feedback from the then Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi […]
Pakistan felt it was unfair to give India a higher status than itself at Climate Change negotiations despite having less to lose from it, according to US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson. Writing from Islamabad shortly after the Copenhagen round of Climate Change negotiations petered out, Patterson noted that the mood in Islamabad was particularly […]
India’s slow moving bureaucracy and legal system came out as its biggest disadvantage relative to China, executives of American firms in Bangalore told a visiting Senator in 2007. The cumbersome nature of carrying out development work, including slow moving legal challenges and overall decision making, was keeping India back from developing critical infrastructure like roads, […]
The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) tried to prevent the emergence of Nepal as a republic in 2008 as it wanted to retain it as the World’s last ‘Hindu Kingdom’, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) felt. Krishna Mahara, a member of the Maoist Central Committee of Nepal expressed the fear in a letter written to […]
Singapore consciously cultivates its relationship with India as a way to counter-balance China’s growing influence in South East Asia, according to a cable written by American ambassador to the city-state, Franklin Lavin in 2004. According to Lavin’s reading of the country’s new “India fever”, Singapore does not want China to dominate South East Asia and […]
The coming to power of Mayawati, India’s most powerful Dalit leader, in Uttar Pradesh has instilled fear in the minds of criminals and improved law and order, the US embassy to India felt after a review at the end of 100 days of her rule in UP in 2007. While she may not be “up […]
Is the famed ‘Kerala Model’ of development — characterized by high government spending on health and education — unsustainable in the long run? Even the state’s then ruling Communists were not sure it was, according to a detailed report of a visit by US officials to the South Indian state in late 2007. The visit […]
Two years before Japan, India, Brazil and Germany forced a showdown over admitting the four of them to the permanent member club of the UN Security Council, the Japanese had secretly approached the US with a proposal to admit just two new members. Going by the clues in the subsequent US diplomatic cables leaked by […]
UN negotiations are often dull, drab and devoid of drama. However, occasionally, like on September 15, 2008, they become the stage for high drama that can give any Hollywood potboiler a run for its money. The following incident, which may aptly be characterized as an all out diplomatic war, happened between two opposing groups of […]
The Americans saw India as the biggest stumbling block in their attempts to achieve a compromise over the expansion of the UN Security Council to include new members. In diplomatic cables dating from 2007 — when the negotiations started gathering pace — to 2010, the US delegation to the UN variously characterised India as an […]
Despite the US’ official stand favoring an expansion of the UN Security Council, new diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks show how it was doing everything it could to delay or mould the reform process to its ends. According to them, the US delegation to the United Nations worked out a clear strategy to delay or […]
Many who have never been to China wonder how it would be like, how it would feel to live in a reportedly ‘authoritarian’ monolithic society where strict control is exercised on all forms of expression and, apparently, fear rules. Whether the above image of China is the correct one or simply the result of Western […]
Leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha and senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj has called the ‘bubble gum’ episode “India’s Watergate” and called for a thorough investigation into the matter. “Is it that the Government was spying on its own Finance Minister? Or is it a Corporate House,” she asked in a tweet, echoing the […]
A US diplomatic cable written two years ago has revealed how the Left parties, which opposed the Indo-US civil nuclear deal tooth and nail, were the most aggressive when it came to enjoying the fruits of that agreement. The alliance between the Congress party and the Left parties (which were supporting the UPA at that […]
An official from the US embassy at Islamabad was so ruffled by the harsh reactions of Pakistani foreign and defence experts to the Indo-US nuclear deal that he suggested a new name for the conference in a bitter account of his ‘travails’. “…the conference should have been billed ‘Seminar on U.S.-Indian Perfidy (untrustworthiness)’” the official […]
Israel felt that a BJP government showed more enthusiasm in advancing mutual co-operation between India and Israel, compared to the Congress-led UPA government, going by a cable released by Wikileaks. According to it, the then Deputy Director General for Asia and the Pacific with Isreal foreign ministry, Ruth Kahanoff, felt that the [Congress-led] government was […]
Many oil-rich Gulf states, ostensibly allied with the United States, have a policy of turning a blind eye to the terror planning and financing activities on their territories with Kuwait and Qatar being the worst offenders, according to a US diplomatic cable. Saudi Arabia has done the most to disrupt terror networks, particularly the al […]
The US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, argued strongly with her Government to sell Pakistan more F-16 fighter jets to, ironically, prevent a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Patterson, in a 2009 cable, pointed out that Pakistan is likely to use Nuclear weapons against India in a matter a few days if the two […]
Pakistan diverted most of the money it received for counter-insurgency operations from the US to non-military uses, the country’s then finance minister Shaukat Tarin told Anne Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan in late 2009. In a US diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, Tarin also requested Patterson to share how much money the US pays […]
The US State Department was concerned about the terrorist-charities increasingly taking over the functions that should ideally be carried out by the Pakistani government. In a cable written on 30 December 2009, the US State Department urged the US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson to convey its worries over the development to the local government. […]
