Chicago, June 4 (IANS) Nothing illustrates more tellingly how diplomatic grandiosity does not always work at the ground level than the matter of India’s struggle to gain access to Mumbai terror plotter David Coleman Headley.
Even as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the start of the India-US strategic dialogue in Washington that bilateral relations have the potential to ‘shape the rest of this century’, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna still had to remind her about expediting New Delhi’s request for access to Headley.
In a barely finessed reference to the Headley case, Krishna said: ‘…access for our authorities to persons who have been apprehended by your government in connection with the Mumbai terror attack is the logical next step’.
Although Krishna reciprocated to Clinton’s overall perspective about the significance of India-US relations in an equally sanguine manner, the sheer force of this reminder could not have been lost on Clinton.
In her opening remarks before the dialogue Clinton had said: ‘India’s rise is a defining story line of the early 21st century, and the US-India partnership will help shape the rest of this century.’
Quite obviously, in the larger scheme of strategic relations access to Headley may be a trivial distraction. But in the short term it has become emblematic of the difficulties that often hamstring an otherwise happy embrace.
Even as Krishna was pressing Clinton on the Headley access, there was unintentionally humorous unfolding of speculations whether a team from India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) was already in Chicago to interrogate the 49-year-old Pakistani American.
There was absolutely no confirmation of whether the NIA team was indeed in town from either Headley’s attorney John Theis or the US Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case. Both offices offered no comments.
It is baffling that Krishna would choose to include access to Headley, albeit without specifically naming him, in his opening remarks if the NIA team was already in Chicago standing by for word from the US authorities. Yet speculations among some Indians persisted that the team was scheduled to begin questioning Headley Thursday.
It is ironic that at a time when the leaderships of the two countries are engaged in forging a relationship which they believe could shape ‘the rest of this century’, at the lower, operational level things are not nearly as smooth.
It is fair to wonder how Washington would have reacted had a key plotter of a comparable terror attack on US soil pleaded guilty and was awaiting sentencing in India while New Delhi took as much time in allowing access. It is debatable whether the US would have then found it opportune to talk about a defining strategic relationship with India.
While it is nobody’s case that the hugely transformative potential of India-US relations should be weighed down by individual legal matters, equally it cannot be denied that they underscore the operational challenges in realizing that potential.
Meanwhile, if the NIA team is indeed in Chicago it was not clear whether they arrived on the basis of express assurance from the Department of Justice that they would be given access. Such legally defined visits do not take place and foreign investigators do not simply show up without all loose ends being tied up beforehand.
