New Delhi: Is Congress leader Shashi Tharoor really cosying up to the BJP? The Thiruvananthapuram MP, known for his flamboyance and flair for the English language, has said that he is now embarrassed for opposing India’s stance when the Russia-Ukraine War broke out in 2022.
Speaking at an interactive session of the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi on Tuesday, Tharoor said that he was left with “egg on his face” for opposing India’s policy. India is now in a position to make a difference and bring about lasting peace, he said.
His statement came a day after Polish deputy foreign minister and secretary of state Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski said that Modi may have convinced Russian premier Vladimir Putin not to use nuclear tactical weapons against Ukraine.
Tharoor had criticised the Indian government for not condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine during a Parliamentary debate, soon after the War started. “I am still wiping the egg off my face because I was one person in that Parliamentary debate who actually criticised the Indian position at the time, back in February 2022,” the former minister of state for external affairs said.
“My criticism had then been based on well-known grounds that there was a violation of the UN charter, that there had been a violation of the principle of inviolability of borders, of the sovereignty of a member state namely Ukraine, and we had always stood for the inadmissibility of the use of force to settle international disputes,” Tharoor added.
“All of those principles had been violated by one party and we should have condemned it. Well, three years later, it does look like I am the one with the egg on my face because clearly the policy has meant that India actually has a Prime Minister who can hug both the president of Ukraine and the president of Russia, two weeks apart and be accepted in both places,” he said during the session on: ‘Waging Peace: Looking Back to Look Ahead’.
According to him, if both sides do agree to a truce, India will be in a position to send peacekeepers, now that Russia has made it clear that it would not accept a peacekeeping force from NATO countries in Europe.
“Speaking as an Indian Parliamentarian, I don’t think there is going to be a lot of resistance to that idea. There was resistance famously when there was a request in 2003 for India to send troops to Iraq and Parliament got together and passed a resolution, saying that in no circumstance, will Indian peacekeepers go to Iraq after the American invasion. I don’t see that happening for Ukraine. I think if it were necessary and there was an agreed peace, I think there would be some willingness to consider. But I can’t speak for the Government, I am in the Opposition,” the Congress MP said.