Vajpayee transformed India’s ties with US, Russia and modus vivendi with China: Jaishankar

India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was all praise for former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's way of handling diplomacy after the 1998 nuclear tests. The former PM saw an opportunity in the neighbourhood and tried to forge relationships that would abjure terrorism, said Jaishankar presiding over 3rd A B Vajpayee Memorial Lecture.

New Delhi: Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee transformed India’s relationship with the United States, and ties with Russia, modus vivendi with China, EAM S Jaishankar said at 3rd Atal Bihari Vajpayee Memorial Lecture. He praised the then prime minister Vajpayee's way of handling the diplomatic situation following the nuclear tests in 1998 and said that within a space of two years, India had engaged all the major countries of the world.

Presiding over the third Atal Bihari Vajpayee memorial lecture that was delivered by former Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan in New Delhi, Jaishankar said, "The fundamental basis including respect, mutual sensitivity, and mutual interest, which we articulate today in the attempt to reach a modus vivendi with China, a lot of it was visible when the then Foreign Minister Vajpayee visited China. Atal Bihari Vajpayee transformed ties with the US, imparted continuity with ties with Russia, modus vivendi with China", EAM Jaishankar pointed out.

The EAM said the former PM saw an opportunity in the neighborhood but was aware of the challenge of terrorism. He noted that Vajpayee was never impervious to the challenges of terrorism and hailed his realism in using all instruments at his command to actually try to forge a basis of relationships in this region which would very explicitly abjure terrorism.

Talking about the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests, the external affairs minister urged people not to look just at the tests but also look at the diplomacy that followed them. "Within a space of two years after the tests, we had engaged all the major countries of the world, had actually brought them around. When you had the visit of president (Bill) Clinton, PM (John) Howard, PM (Yoshiro) Mori, visit of president (Jacques) Chirac. It was the post-test diplomacy, which I think anybody who is in the field of diplomacy, should look at and seek to draw lessons," he said.

"I was at that time posted in Japan and it was a relationship that was particularly affected by the nuclear tests. But we always drew from the prime minister's confidence that we would find a way of settling it down and indeed today when I look at that relationship, I marvel at the wisdom and the maturity with which prime minister Vajpayee got all of us to look at that particular challenge," Jaishankar added .

Vajpayee served as prime minister thrice - first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months from 1998 to 1999 and then for a full term between 1999 and 2004. During his last stint, India conducted five nuclear tests of advanced weapon designs in May, 1998 at the Pokhran range in Rajasthan.

Jaishankar said Vajpayee also transformed the relationship with the US in the post Cold War environment. He said Vajpayee also imparted continuity and stability into our ties with Russia.

Delivering the Vajpayee Memorial Lecture, Kausikan, former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore and currently chairman of the Middle East Institute at National University of Singapore,said that the world countries were confronted with two inescapable realities - engaging with both the US and China simultaneously as a necessary condition for dealing effectively with either.

Kausikan said thatwithout engagement with China, the US may well take any country for granted and it is not non-existent with respect to India despite being a large country.The US and China will remain at the centre of the international order whichwill become more fluid, he said.

Kausikan predicted that international relationships will become more complicated as countries grapple with political and economic considerations that pull them in different directions."What I believe is emerging is an order of dynamic multipolarity. Shifting combinations of regional middle powers and smaller countries will continually arrange and rearrange themselves in variegated and overlapping patterns along the central axis of US China relations."