Jump to content

Natwar Singh: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
No edit summary
Line 27: Line 27:


===Pakistan===
===Pakistan===
He visited Pakistan for the first time after becoming India's external affairs minister in July 2004 and held bilateral talks with his Pakistani counterpart.
He visited Pakistan for the first time after becoming India's external affairs minister in July 2004 and held bilateral talks with his Pakistani counterpart and took the peace process forward.


===United States of America===
===United States of America===

Revision as of 08:42, 14 November 2005

You must add a |reason= parameter to this Cleanup template – replace it with {{Cleanup|reason=<Fill reason here>}}, or remove the Cleanup template.

File:Kunwar Natwar Singh.jpg
Kunwar Natwar Singh

Kunwar Natwar Singh, popularly known as K. Natwar Singh (born May 16, 1931, Bharatpur, Rajastan, India) is an Indian politician and is a cabinet minister. He is currently a minister without portfolio, having been removed from his post as Minister in charge of External Affairs under a cloud of scandal.

Education and early life

Singh is an arts graduate from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi, Delhi. He also studied at Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University in England and at Beijing University in the China.

Career as bureaucrat

Singh joined the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in 1953 and served for 31 years. One of his earliest assignments was in Beijing, China (1956-58) He was then posted to New York with the Permanent Mission of India, (1961-66) and as India's representative to Executive Board of UNICEF, (1962-66). He served on several important UN committees between 1963 and 1966. In 1966, he was posted to the Prime Minister's Secretariat under Mrs Indira Gandhi. He was part of the Indian delegation to the Heads of Commonwealth Meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, 1975. He was an Indian Delegate to the 30th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York, Heads of Commonwealth Meeting, Lusaka, Zambia in 1979 and the 35th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York. He accompanied Ms. Indira Gandhi on her State visit to the USA in 1982. He served as Executive Trustee, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (U.N.I.T.A.R.) appointed by the Secretary-General, United Nations for six years (1981-86) He also served on the Expert Group appointed by the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, London in 1982 He was appointed Secretary-General of the Seventh Non-aligned summit in New Delhi held in 1983 and Chief Coordinator of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in New Delhi in the same year. He served as Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs from March 1982 to November 1984.

Career as politician

In 1984 he joined the Congress Party and was elected to the eighth Lok Sabha from Bharatpur constituency in Rajasthan. In 1985 he became a minister of state in Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's council of ministers with the portfolios of steel, coal and mines, and agriculture. In 1986, he became minister of state for external affairs i.e. in charge of foreign relations and stayed in this post till 1989, when the government was defeated in the general elections. He was also elected President of the UN Conference on Disarmament and Development held in New York in 1987. He led the Indian delegation to the 42nd Session of the UN General Assembly.

In the 1989 general elections, he contested and lost the Mathura seat. He was back in the twelfth Lok Sabha again in 1998 once again from Bharatpur, but this time in opposition. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan in 2002 and when the Congress came back to power, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointed him to the cabinet as Minister for External affairs on May 23. He had a controversial tenure and he was widely criticized for his allegedly intemperate remarks.

He was removed from the post on November 7, 2005 (though retaining a cabinet role as minister without portfolio) following a controversy over his (and the Congress Party's) alleged involvement in the United Nations Iraqi Oil for Food scandal. The Independent Inquiry Committee [1] under Paul Volcker had reported[2] on October 27, 2005 that he and his son Jagat Singh were non-contractual beneficiaries of the Oil for food programme. Allegedly, they along with Jagat Singh's childhood friend and distant relation Andaleeb Sehgal were associated with a company called Hamdan Exports, which acted as an intermediary for illegal sales of oil to a Swiss firm named Masefield AG. In return, Masefield had to pay kickbacks, (termed "surcharges") partly to Saddam Hussain's regime and partly to Natwar Singh and others. It was alleged that such surcharges were Hussain's way of securing support from politicians around the world.

This scandal represented a serious crisis for the ruling coalition.

Controversial actions and statements

K. Natwar Singh has been noted as a controversial figure in Indian foreign policy for his actions and statements on various topics:

Stand on Iraq

In June 2004, he made a statement about India being willing to review its stand on sending troops to Iraq after the unanimous resolution of the United Nations. "There is a resolution of the last Parliament on this issue in which we had given our opinion that we were against sending troops to Iraq. Now the situation has changed. There is a resolution unanimously passed in the United Nations and there are Arab members in it. We will look at it very carefully. But I must emphasize that this matter will have to be placed before the government at the highest levels, so it would be premature for me to say aye or nay," he said after a 60-minute meeting with US Secretary of State Colin Powell. He has been criticized by the chief opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party for these remarks and for making contradictory statements on India's policy on Pakistan.

Pakistan

He visited Pakistan for the first time after becoming India's external affairs minister in July 2004 and held bilateral talks with his Pakistani counterpart and took the peace process forward.

United States of America

Again in June 2004, he made his first trip to the U.S. after becoming India's foreign minister and met with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Even though the two discussed India's stand on Iraq, the prime reason Singh was in the U.S. was to represent India at the state funeral of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

In April 2005, he became the first Indian foreign minister to meet the United States President in the Oval Office of the White House. On September 23, 2005 he made his first and only public appearance, appearing at Brown University.

Books Published

  1. E.M.Forster : A Tribute, New York, 1964
  2. The Legacy of Nehru, New York, 1965
  3. Tales from Modern India, New York, 1966
  4. Stories from India, London, 1971
  5. Maharaja Suraj Mal (1707-63), London, 1981
  6. Curtain Raisers, Delhi,1984
  7. Profiles & Letters, Delhi, 1997
  8. The Magnificent Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala (1891-1938), Delhi, 1997
  9. Heart to Heart, Delhi, 2003.

References

  • "Indian FM: I will not resign". (Nov. 6, 2005). New Sunday Times, p. 33.
  • "Natwar stripped of foreign portfolio". (Nov. 8, 2005). New Straits Times, p. 34.


Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Natwar_Singh&oldid=28283487"