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FISI members meet Ambassador Ray
Friends of India Society International, Texas Chapter
7923 Riptide , Houston, Texas 77072
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Susheem Mehta
Phone: (713) 261-5263
FAX: (713) 261-5765
Friends of India Society Members Meet Ambassador Ray
Houston, Texas, February 27 -- The Friends of India Society International
(FISI), Texas Chapter,
members were invited to a meeting with the Indian Ambassador Mr. Sidharth
Shankar Ray, in his hotel
suite, Sunday, February 26th. The one and half hours meeting turned out to
be very useful and productive.
FISI congratulated the respected Ambassador for a job well done. He probably
has been instrumental in
changing the course of the Indo-American relations after a gap of five
decades.
FISI members wanted to know from the respected Ambassador the current
situation on the Capitol Hill,
in Washington, D.C. with regards to Pakistan sponsored terrorism in Kashmir,
as well as, with Pakistan's
efforts to acquire the F-16 fighter jets from U.S.A. via some other unnamed
"third" country.
Mr. Ray spoke about India's efforts to normalize relations with Pakistan and
India's offer to convert the
present LAC into a Line of Peace and Tranquility (a la China). He spoke of
India's no-first strike offer on
population and commercial centers. He said that Pakistan had consistently
refused to talk with India until
the Kashmir dispute was settled to Pakistan's satisfaction. Mr. Ray in the
private meeting (off-the-record)
accused Pakistan of aiding and encouraging Islamic Fundamentalist elements in
the Kashmir valley to
wreck vengeance on innocent people. He said that the biggest daunting task
for the Government was to
contain such elements before they affected rest of the muslim population in
India. He said that if Muslims
became fundamentalist, Hindus too would become militant. He said that the
Indian Embassy was
constantly bringing all this to the attention of the U.S. law makers. All
these remarks are confidential
please !! Strictly for DON. This should not be quoted outside.
The Ambassador expressed grave misgivings about any efforts to circumvent
the Pressler Amendment.
F-16's had a range which could take them upto Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh in
the North and upto
Mangalore in the South without ever re-fuelling. He pointed out that the
United States had many vital
investments in Western India (offshore and on-shore). All such investments
would be within the striking
range of the aircraft. He urged ALL NRI's to write letters to their
respective Congressmen and Senators.
He said that any efforts to sell the remaining 38 aircraft to a third country
would also lead to an arms race
in the sub-continent, because, the aircraft will finally end up with Pakistan
anyway. Any such de-
stabilization would not be in the U.S. interests, because that would draw
away India from the present
economic liberalization process.
The FISI members queried the Ambassador on the NPT treaty. He assured the
members that India
would not sign the treaty in its present form. India felt that this treaty
was discriminatory and one-sided
and meant only for the nuclear have-nots. He assured the members India was
regularly briefing the U.S.
about India's security environment. India had a 14,103 Kilometers of land
border with countries that were
not great friends of India. India had a coastline of 7,458 kilometers.
India had vital offshore oil, gas, and
other economic interests to take care. China was now India's neighbor which
refused to stop nuclear
tests. China had defeated India in 1962 war. China forcefully occupied
Tibet in 1950. China's missiles
targeted major Indian cities. Under such circumstances, how could India
forever forsake nuclear
disarmament without reciprocal steps from other nuclear powers he asked.
On the missile regime, he said that India shall continue making Prithvi
missiles. Agni was just a technical
demonstrator to the world. Indian scientists need to know how such missiles
were manufactured and
tested. So, Agni was tested and will be tested in the future.
At one point he refused to comment on Ms. Robin Raphael's utterences. He
advised FISI members to
ignore her, but concentrate on building American opinion instead.
He talked in glowing terms on the pace of the economic cooperation between
the U.S. and India. He said
that the total U.S. direct investment in India now stood around $9 billion.
Another $8 billion were invested
in indirect investments like GDR's and FII's. FISI members expressed strong
misgivings about letting
foreign multi-nationals enter the consumer markets. He disagreed and said
that such investments brought
into India far larger capital investments. He asked the San Francisco
consulate to provide FISI with the
statistics and breakdown by sector of U.S. investments in India. Replying to
a pointed question from FISI
he said if things remained the same as now, India would not go the Mexico
way. He rolled off statistics to
prove his point. FISI reserves its judgement on this one, until the receipt
of statistics from SF Consulate.
FISI plans to review the numbers provided before coming up with a response.
If any DONer is interested,
we shall provide you the official GOI arguments favouring multi- nationals
in the consumer sector. Also,
we shall provide you the GOI arguments on differences in the situation
between India and Mexico.
FISI queried him about dual citizenship for the NRI's. He said that a select
committee of Cabinet (???) or
Parliament (???) was looking into it; but the idea of giving citizenship
cards to NRI's was already accepted
by the Government of India. It was just a matter of time.
The Ambassador announced that a new Consulate in Houston will be opened later
part of this year. The
budget was already sanctioned for this. He felt that the Houston Consulate
would be the most important
commercial Consulate for India.
FISI conveyed to the Ambassador the Texas NRI community's very strong
feelings against the ban on the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad. FISI told the Ambassador that this step was
politically motivated to influence
voters in India. It had no moral legs to stand on and was totally
indefensible. At this point the Ambassador
became very defensive and combative. He said that the matter was sub-judice
and he could not do
anything about it. FISI members argued that he could, as an ambassador,
convey the feelings of NRI's to
the government of India without harming the judicial process in any way. It
seemed that the respected
Ambassador had a closed mind on this subject and was not willing to listen to
another point of view as a
true democrat.
On the whole, the meeting went extremely well. The Ambassador accepted an
invitation from FISI to
come to Houston to preside over a FISI function. However, he wanted a few
more invitations scheduled
the same time, in order to justify the expense of coming to Houston.
