India hopeful of early resolution of diplomatic row

25122013

Updated on : 24-12-2013 12:45 AM

“Something will happen”, said External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on the prospects of an early resolution of the stand-off arising out of the arrest of senior diplomat Devyani Khobragade in the US.

As India and the US continued to make efforts to resolve the issue, Khobragade, who has since been transferred as Counsellor in the Indian Mission to the UN to give her full diplomatic immunity, has sought waiver from attending the pre-trial process. A decision on her plea will be known Monday. Asked how hopeful he was of a resolution of the issue soon, Khurshid on Sunday said “World keeps moving forward, world never dies, world never stops. Something will happen.” On the US State Department welcoming his remarks on Indo-US ties, he said “They (the US) must do something. Welcoming is not enough”. Khurshid had termed the US as a valuable partner emphasising that both sides need to preserve the extremely exceptionally valuable relations. 39-year-old Khobragade, a 1999-batch IFS officer posted as Deputy Consul General in New York, was taken into custody last week on visa fraud charges as she was dropping her daughter to school before being released on a USD 250,000 bond after pleading not guilty in court. India had demanded that the case against Khobragade be dropped unconditionally but it was rejected by the US. Meanwhile, the deadline for the US diplomats and families in India to turn-in their IDs will expire Monday, with government not extending it. It was among the measures taken by India to downgrade privileges of US diplomats in the country after Khobragade was arrested and put through both strip and cavity searches, procedures normally used for criminals. In New York, India’s Ambassador to the UN Asoke Mukerji said he had written a letter to UN chief Ban Ki-moon around December 18-19 informing him of Khobragade’s transfer as Counsellor to the Indian mission here and requested that she be accorded the same privileges and immunities as a diplomatic officer. Mukerji said the papers are being processed and the UN has to send Khobragade’s documents to the US Office of Foreign Missions, which is part of the US State Department protocol for clearance. “Now it is between the UN and the US State Department,” he said Publicly their common refrain was that the bilateral relationship was extremely valuable, though Washington continued to harp on their line that Khobragade would not enjoy diplomatic immunity “retroactively”. She has since been transferred to the Indian Mission to the UN to give her full immunity. External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid maintained his conciliatory tone when he termed the relationship “extremely exceptionally valuable”, a sentiment reciprocated by the US State Department which said, “it is important to preserve and protect our partnership”. Khurshid told reporters in New Delhi, “We are in a conversation at different levels. Let the conversation go to its logical conclusion.” In Washington, a State Department Spokesperson said the US was “continuing the conversation with our Indian counterparts privately” to resolve the situation arising out of the arrest and strip search of Khobragade in a visa fraud case. Asking the US to “understand the value of the relationship”, Khurshid asked whether it was “unreasonable” for India to expect Washington to allow its diplomat to serve with dignity. The State Department maintained that even if there was a change in the status of Khobragade from being Deputy Consul General with limited immunity to being posted to the UN mission where she gets full immunity, there would not be a “clean slate” from the past charges. However, the US assertion that retroactive immunity is not possible flies in the face of precedents such as the one involving a Saudi prince in 1982 when he was accused of holding an Egyptian woman against her will in Dade County in Florida state. Observers say that at the time of the incident, Prince Abdulaziz had no diplomatic credentials. But three weeks later, the State Department granted Abdulaziz and his family full diplomatic immunity. The Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Dade County’s counter claims and held that the Prince had been eligible for diplomatic status at the time of the incident even if he had not received it. The Court ruling, in effect, endorsed the concept of retroactive immunity.