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Raje to ask NAM backing for India

In a move to garner the support of the non-aligned nations over nuclear tests, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has asked Minister of State for External Affairs Vasundhara Raje to rush to Colombia for the NAM ministerial meeting and explain India's geo-political compulsions which prompted it to undertake the exercise.

Official sources indicate that Raje, who was attending the G-15 Summit at Cairo, will leave for the Colomban capital Cartagena for the NAM meeting on May 19 and 20.

The minister has been briefed to explain to the 50-odd countries expected to attend the NAM summit that the five nuclear tests India conducted were not aimed against anyone. Raje is expected to ask the NAM countries to back India, at a time when it faces harsh sanctions from the Western world.

This is part of an ongoing exercise, wherein the ministry for external affairs is in close touch with all countries through diplomatic channels, to explain its compulsions. Indian diplomats have been told to point out, to their foreign interlocutors, that India has always behaved responsibly despite provocation from its neighbours.

'We have exercised utmost resttraint since 1974, when we conducted the first nuclear test, and the recent tests are merely the reaction to the environment around us' is the thrust of the message being conveyed by India's diplomats to their counterparts abroad.

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