Come on please send your troops, they wont get hurt. Besides we
are trying to gear up for another war to divert attention away from
the ailing economy------


In Rebuff to U.S., India Says It Won't Send Troops to Iraq
By JOHN KIFNER

EW DELHI, July 14 ‹ In a sharp blow to America's postwar plans, India
refused today to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq.

The Bush administration had hoped that India would send a full army
division of 17,000 or more soldiers to serve in the Kurdish region
around Mosul, and it had exerted considerable pressure on the
government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to do so.

That would have made the Indian contingent second in numbers only to
the United States in the occupation force and given a more
international texture to a coalition that consists primarily of
American and British troops. It would also have relieved hard-pressed
American troops, who could either go home or be redeployed to more
volatile Sunni Muslim areas in the center of the country.

India's refusal will not affect the scheduled rotation of forces, which
will bring 17,000 allied troops to Iraq over the summer.

But following several months of uncertainty and debate, the
government's Cabinet Committee on Security met in a two-hour meeting
this afternoon and voted not to send the troops.

"Our longer-term national interest, our concern for the people of Iraq,
our long-standing ties with the gulf region as a whole, as well as our
growing dialogue and strengthened ties with the U.S. have been key
elements in this consideration," India's foreign minister, Yashwant
Sinha, said in a brief statement read to journalists after the meeting.

The reasoning, Indian political observers said, was relatively simple:
the war in Iraq is extremely unpopular here.

Even as American troops were approaching Baghdad in early April,
India's Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the
war as unjust and calling on the United States to withdraw. News
reports spoke of antiwar demonstrations in hundreds of cities and
towns. A poll in the current issue of the weekly newsmagazine Outlook
showed 69 percent opposed to sending troops to Iraq. Other polls have
put the figure as high as 87 percent.

The political considerations loomed larger with elections coming up
this fall for five state legislatures, four of them in the
Hindi-speaking heartland that is controlled by the opposition Congress
Party. These elections are expected to set the tone for national
elections in September of 2004.

"Public opinion is sharply critical of the war," said Praful Bidwai, a
prominent journalist. "It just doesn't make sense for Indian soldiers
to be basically used as cannon fodder when the U.S. is getting bogged
down and taking casualties."

The Americans had pressed hard to get India to send the troops. When
the deputy prime minister, Lal Krishna Advani, visited Washington in
the spring he got a protocol upgrade that saw him greeted by Vice
President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfield, the
national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and even President Bush,
news reports here said. The officials all urged India to participate in
what the Americans described as a "stabilization" effort.

Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal recieved similar treatment in
Washington, meeting with Ms. Rice and the deputy defense secretary,
Paul D. Wolfowitz, a main architect of the Iraq strategy. The Pentagon
dispatched a special team here to assist in planning the Indian
deployment. The Indians themselves dispatched emissaries to Iraq and
neighboring countries to assess the situation.

Some in the government argued for the deployment, contending that a
closer relationship with the only superpower would strengthen India's
international position ‹ particularly in relation to rival Pakistan,
which has tied itself to Washington in the war on terrorism. India and
Pakistan have a bitter dispute over Kashmir that goes back to
independence in 1947. Some also suggested that India could get a
lucrative slice of postwar reconstruction contracts.

A retired general, Satish Nambier, for example, argued in an essay in
Outlook that sending a force to Iraq would in "considerations of
realpolitik" give India a chance to be a major player on the world
scene. Still, he hastened to begin the essay by underscoring his "total
opposition to the unilateral" American operations in Iraq.

Writing in the same magazine, the columnist Prem Shankar Jha expressed
a more prevaling view, suggesting that the situation in Iraq was
changing for the worse.

"To send American troops now ‹ without knowing what they will be called
on to do, how long they will have to stay, and when and how their task
will be completed ‹ would be to push many of them to a pointless
death," he wrote.

"Iraq has not been liberated, but invaded and occupied," he continued.
"The Iraqis know it, resent it and are preparing to resist it. If India
sends its troops to Iraq now it will be as part of an occupation force.
Stabilization will mean oppression."

Some within the ruling Hindu nationalist coaltion were strongly opposed
to sending forces to Iraq, including the defense minister, George
Fernandes, and other military and security officials. And two
left-leaning former prime ministers, Indar K. Gujral and V. K. Singh,
issued a statement against deployment.

"We believe irreparable damage will be done to India's reputation and
good name if Indian troops were sent to prop up the occupation of
Iraq," they said. "Above all, it will be unwise and unfair to our army
to send them on a mission to risk their lives where no national
interest is at stake."

The government statement said that "careful thought" had been given to
the matter and that India "remains ready to respond to the urgent needs
of the Iraqi people for stability, security, political progress and
economic reconstruction," adding that India was planning, with Jordan,
to set up a hospital in Najaf as a "concrete gesture of our support to
the Iraqi people."

The statement added that "were there to be an explicit U.N. mandate for
the purpose, the government of India could consider the deployment of
our troops in Iraq.

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 19:57:45 GMT, Eltanin <eltanin@boxfrog.com> wrote:


>India's refusal will not affect the scheduled rotation of forces, which
>will bring 17,000 allied troops to Iraq over the summer.

17'000 ! Allied troops ? And all over the summer....We are now
mid-July :-)

From were ?

Regards
--
Pieter Wenk /CH-1800 Vevey - Rivièra Vaudoise
These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece
the people.
--Abraham Lincoln, 1837
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