Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Thursday yet again took a different stand from his party and rest of the opposition and came in support of the Centre for its stand on the ongoing US-Israel and Iran conflict in the Middle East.Speaking to news agency PTI, Tharoor said that he understands the government’s desire to take a cautious stand on the conflict and hoped that it could make a public call to both sides to end the war quickly.However, Tharoor said that India should have condemned the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei in a US-Israel strike. “I don’t know about condemning it, but we should certainly have condoled it. After all (he was) the spiritual leader of a country with which he have friendly relations,” the Congress leader said. “It would have been appropriate, the day it happened, for us to express public condolences and share the grief of his loved ones and of his nation just as two years ago when president Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, we immediately issued a condolence as well as announced national mourning,” he added.The Thiruvananthapuram MP said that the moment the Iranian embassy opened the condolence book, foreign secretary Vikram Misri went and signed the book, which was a “good thing”, he said.“But I guess we could have been a bit more… it is simply the courteous thing to do for any country. For example, the president of some faraway country, with which we do not even have such a close relation, were to be such a victim, it would be odd for us not to offer condolences,” Tharoor said.“But apart from that, I think I understand the government’s desire to take, for the lack of a better word, a cautious stand,” he said.Tharoor also said that a good group of countries not party to the conflict on either side could go to both sides and ask them to call off the conflict, and India should be at the forefront of this.Tharoor said that India has enormous stakes in what is going on and its energy security is dependent on the situation in the Gulf, including its LPG and LNG imports.“We have 9 million of our citizens living there, which are an important source of remittances, and their safety and well-being is naturally a priority, there are investments coming to us from countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and we have very important overall trade relations as well as political interest and security cooperation, all of that,” Tharoor said.“You don’t want to see that jeopardised. So for us, peace and stability in the Middle East-West Asia is extremely important,” he added.This comes as the opposition attacked the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government for its “silence” on the assassination of Khamenei, saying “a compromised prime minister no doubt wants to avoid antagonising his American and Israeli friend”.Condemning the assassination, the opposition said that India condemned Iran’s attacks on Gulf states but was “completely quiet” on the US-Israeli assault on Iran on Iran in the first place.Earlier this month, the Congress had staged a walkout in the Rajya Sabha and protested in the Lok Sabha to express its dissatisfaction with the statement of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on the West Asia situation in both Houses of Parliament.The party had termed Jaishankar’s statement “vapid” and alleged that PM Narendra Modi’s foreign policy “(mis)adventurism”, coupled with the government’s “undermining” of the Indian Foreign Service, is pushing India into “vassalage”.Making a suo motu statement in Parliament, Jaishankar had said New Delhi stood for maintaining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states in the region. He defended allowing the Iranian ship to dock at an Indian port as the right decision taken on humanitarian grounds.
