CALCUTTA, 15 September 2004 — The Indian government was forced to issue a lengthy statement supporting the Iraqi resistance fighting American occupation to secure the release of three Indian hostages earlier this month, a leading English daily reported on Monday.
“But the Arabic statement never saw the light of day in New Delhi and is still being kept under wraps by the Ministry of External Affairs”, The Telegraph newspaper, published from Calcutta, disclosed in a front-page dispatch from Washington.
According to the report, Hostage Crisis: The Inside Story, India combined “secrecy, duplicity and unconventional diplomacy” — besides ransom — to free Kuwait Gulf Link (KGL) employees Tilak Raj, Sukhdev Singh and Antaryami from the clutches of their captors.
The abductors apparently insisted on India condemning the US occupation of Iraq in a written statement after External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh described them as bandits and criminals in order to salvage their reputation tarnished by the public allegation.
India’s career diplomats took it up as a challenge although the political leadership — notwithstanding India’s carefully cultivated image of not being pro-US — was extremely wary of issuing any statement that would antagonize the US.
The main players, according to the report, were Talmiz Ahmad, India’s ambassador in Oman, and Zikr-ur-Rahman, an External Affairs Ministry’s interpreter who was Ahmed’s close aide when he served as ambassador in Riyadh.
“Mr. Ahmad’s brief was an impossible one. No negotiations with terrorists and not even a hint that India would pay any ransom. He instinctively realized that he needed someone like Rahman: Low profile, with a deep understanding of the Bedouin way of life.
“Instead of a top official, if a mere translator was talking to the kidnappers, it would keep up the farce in New Delhi that India was not bargaining with terrorists”, the report said.
The outcome of the drafts that went back and forth between Baghdad and New Delhi for several days was a final statement that “drew heavily on the Indian Parliament’s resolution against the war in Iraq: It expressed support for the aspirations of the Iraqi people for freedom and self-rule. But the clincher statement still remains a secret in Delhi.”
