US offering carrots to India on Iraq - The Times of India


Via Winds of Change


The US has been offering India a piece of Iraqi reconstruction. Maybe India could get that seat on the UN Security Council, after all, although it won't be the UN...

In an interview with The Times of India, US ambassador to India Robert Blackwill said, "We hope you have a major part to play and we have conveyed that at very high levels."[...]


Blackwill said India with its "very well developed successful norms in civil society" had a role to play in the "construction of civil society" in Iraq and "economic reconstruction". India, he said, had a "comparative advantage" over many countries because of three factors: Its "vital civil society", its "long term ties with Iraq" and the fact that "India would be welcomed in that situation" where "not every country would be welcomed." "So for all those reasons, we hope you have a major part to play and we have conveyed that at very high levels," he said.


The ambassador, however, added that detailed discussions on this aspect had not yet been held with the Indian government because the US did not want to give the impression that it was "planning in detail for a situation which has not yet happenned."


The US now had "a very clear perception of India's substantive and serious equities in the region" unlike during the 1991 Gulf war, Blackwill said, claiming that India itself had also been able to influence US policy to some degree.[...]