Perils of three-way security cooperation
Tokyo wants India, Japan, and the U.S. to develop a trilateral framework for security cooperation. But New Delhi has good reason to be wary. 14 February 2006The Hindu Perils of … Continue reading
Transcript of the complete Prachanda interview
For those interested, I have uploaded the entire verbatim transcript of my interview with Prachanda, leader of the Nepali Maoists. That’s all 8,000 words of it, as posted on the … Continue reading
"Multiparty democracy in Nepal will be message to Indian Naxalites"
In the second and final part of this exclusive interview with The Hindu, Maoist leader Prachanda provides his evaluation of the role of India, China, and the United States in … Continue reading
Prachanda: From people’s war to competitive democracy
Bespectacled and greying, 52-year-old Prachanda looks and sounds distinctly professorial. His measured tone and quiet demeanour bear no resemblance to the fearsome descriptions propagated by his royalist detractors. When I … Continue reading
Maoist leader unveils road map for change in Nepal
In an exclusive interview to The Hindu — conducted recently over an hour and a half at an undisclosed location — Prachanda hails India’s “positive stand” against autocratic monarchy but … Continue reading
A question mark now hangs over the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal
Unless Washington blinks on the Fast Breeder reactor and voluntary safeguards, the agreement will not fly in India. 7 February 2006The Hindu Question mark over Indo-U.S. nuclear dealSiddharth Varadarajan FOR … Continue reading
The IAEA votes to refer Iran
Cuba, Syria and Venezuela voted against, Algeria, Belarus, Indonesia, Libya and South Africa abstained and 27 countries, including India, the P-5, Brazil and Egypt voted in favour of the motion … Continue reading
IAEA report on Iran paints picture that is far from bleak
In its latest report prepared for the February 2-3 extraordinary meeting of the Board of Governors , the IAEA says some questions still remain but cites numerous instances of Iranian … Continue reading
A messy compromise on Iran
Reporting Teheran to the Security Council but deferring action till March — as the P-5 have decided — will neither still Washington’s appetite for confrontation nor make a diplomatic solution … Continue reading
Persian Puzzle: What happens next
An idiot’s guide to a familiar plot. 1 February 2006The Hindu Persian puzzle: what happens next Siddharth Varadarajan What have the P-5 agreed to do? The Foreign Ministers of Britain, … Continue reading
Lifting the veil from the Security Council
Javier Perez de Cuellar told Chinmaya R. Gharekhan of India in 1991 that the U.N. Secretary-General’s job had lost its charm now that the Cold War had ended and the … Continue reading
Pouring troubled water on oil
Regular readers of my pieces on energy issues would have noticed the key role India’s oil minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, was playing in pushing cooperation between India and China, Iran … Continue reading
After Iran gas, U.S. tells India to back off Syrian oil
It’s not just Iran the Bush administration wants India to keep away from when it comes to energy matters. Syria has also joined the list of countries Washington says India … Continue reading
Coming to terms with nuclear regime change
Reviled by some in India as the “ayatollahs of non-proliferation”, Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center and Leonard Spector of the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies are leading the charge against … Continue reading
Siddharth Varadarajan 