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Friday, Jul 29, 2005

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National

When Ahmed turned the tables on Sinha

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: A Minister of State (MoS) got the better of a former Cabinet Minister in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

During question hour, former External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, wanted to know why India had sent a Minister of State to the G-77 summit held in Doha instead of the Prime Minister or the External Affairs Minister.

To this, Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahmed, who had represented India at the summit and was fielding the questions in the absence of External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, said he had more than fulfilled the Government's mandate for him at the Doha summit.

Rank was less important than doing the job assigned by the Government, he said to the accompaniment of thumping of desks by the ruling party Members.

Mr. Sinha acknowledged the astuteness of the reply and asked the Prime Minister, who was in the House, to promote Mr. Ahmed to the rank of Cabinet Minister.

He said if a MoS could adequately represent India, this should be the norm in all future summit meetings.

Mr. Sinha asked why Mr. Singh skipped the Doha meeting to accompany United Progressive Alliance Chairperson Sonia Gandhi to Russia, a country that had opposed the G-4's (India, Brazil, Germany and Japan) deadline for United Nations reforms.

While appreciating Mr. Sinha's observations about high-level representation at major multilateral meetings, Mr. Ahmed said Russia was a very important country for India: it was a strategic partner and a permanent U.N. Security Council member. Therefore, consultation with Russia was equally important.

Then Mr. Ahmed turned the tables by saying that at the first G-77 meeting (during the previous National Democratic Alliance government's tenure), India was neither represented by the Prime Minister nor by the External Affairs Minister, but by the Human Resource Development Minister.

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