Posted on 03/12/2005 8:18:35 PM PST by CarrotAndStick
NEW DELHI--An ardent sports fan, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be forgiving if her Indian hosts are a bit distracted when she visits this week. India is caught up in its version of March Madness, a series of passionate cricket matches pitting India against neighbor and erstwhile blood foe Pakistan. The series has been embraced as a sign of easing political tensions, with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf due to make a rare visit to India to cheer his side on. Still, Rice can be a headline grabber if, as Indian officials anticipate, she sets a date for a fall visit by President Bush--an event seen here as affirming India's strengthening ties with the United States, its largest trading and investment partner. "In a week's time, probably, this matter will be resolved," Prime Minster Manmohan Singh told a group of visiting American editors. A visit would give Bush a chance to applaud India's market-opening economic reforms and to advance his democracy campaign by pointing to the diversity in the world's largest democracy: India's president is Muslim, its prime minister is a Sikh, and its most powerful political figure, Sonia Gandhi, is Roman Catholic--in a predominately Hindu nation.
For their part, Indians appreciate that Bush isn't hammering them over nuclear weapons and American-job outsourcing. A recent BBC survey found that India was among the few countries where people view Bush's re-election positively. Prithviraj Chavan, a minister of state, predicts "an exceptionally warm reception for him," even though India refused to send troops to Iraq and opposes a possible sale of U.S. F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, with which it has fought three wars since 1947.
But back to cricket. Some 4,000 Pakistanis last week took advantage of India's eased border controls to see the opening game played in Punjab province. For some, it was the first opportunity for reunions of families split during the 1947 partition that created Pakistan. Among the visitors: Musharraf's mother, who hadn't set foot in India since fleeing in 1947 with her young son. -Terry Atlas
I haven't felt this way about someone I've never met since I was in love with Michelle Pfeiffer in high school...
After the water deal she made while abroad recently (a net flow 1.15 million acre feet of water from the US to Mexico), we shoud expect great things...
"Rice also announced that the United States and Mexico had settled a decades-old, cross-water debt. Mexico will transfer enough water to the United States to cover a debt that Texas has claimed that Mexico has owed under a 1944 treaty. That water-sharing pact requires Mexico to send the United States an average of 350,000 acre-feet of water annually from six Rio Grande tributaries. The United States in return must send Mexico 1.5 million acre feet from the Colorado River. "
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1360419/posts
vive the millenni
um three cheers for labor
give all things to enni
one bugger thy nabor
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