The Big 'B' Word

8

"Gilani sahb, tussi ki kitta?" (Gilani sahb, What have you done?), the fiery questions hit Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani as soon as he exited from talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Sharm El Sheikh. While the Indian media was exercised over the backing down on talks, the Pakistani media was taking its Prime Minister to task over the exclusion of "Jammu and Kashmir" from the Joint Statement. But then, the discourse changed, and little by little, like the proverbial blind men feeling around the elephant, the full implications of the joint statement began to dawn on the media, to the point of the now almost frenetic focus on the line about Balochistan. It's an innocuous enough line in Para 6 : "Prime Minister Gilani mentioned that Pakistan has some information on threats in Balochistan and other areas." But of course, the outrage now isn't over the line- it's....

Indian boots on the Champs Elysee

0

This could be January 26th I think. From my vantage point in the media box on the Champs Elysees - the Paris equivalent of Rajpath - I can see Prime Minister Manmohan Singh taking the salute, the smart soldiers leading the parade are from the colourful Maratha Light Infantry Brigade, and the military bands are belting out Saare Jahaan Se Achcha. Towards the end of the parade, there's another amazing sight - French paratroopers jump out of the sky, their parachutes are the French tricolour, but they're holding the Indian tricolour as they make a neat landing right in front of the Presidential box. And the 400 men of the Indian contingent put up an equally neat show marching in step and tune. "Eendia is how you say eet, the new black in Paris," says one journalist I am standing with.....

Deja vu or something new?

9

Yes, I know most of you are going to roll your eyes - not India-Pakistan again???? But here it is, I am on board the Prime Minister's plane Air India-1 headed for France and Egypt, and all that anyone wants to talk about is Pakistan... his meeting with his Pakistani counterpart on Thursday. I think it's time someone did a deep analysis of the impact of India-Pakistan relations on every multilateral summit they attend - from the UN General Assembly, to SAARC, to the Commonwealth, even to smaller ones like the BRIC summit in Russia last month, or the Foreign Minister's pre G-8 and the one that's coming up this week at the Non Aligned Summit at Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh. Each one of the summits have lofty vision statements on poverty alleviation, climate change and nuclear disarmament- but the statements are relegated to a....