Friday, September 02, 2005
Ambassidor Dr. Mulford's Address at IIT Madras
Dr. David Mulford’s interactive session with students of IITM on September 01, 2005 at CLT.
The institute has arranged for an interactive session with Ambassidor Dr. Mulford on his visit to Chennai and the time has been fixed at 5.15 PM but was started only at 6 PM since Dr. Mulford arrived very late to the venue and ended at 6.50 PM. He has started his address with how he got the news from Mr. Collin Powel, the then secretary of state about his appointment of ambassador to India when he was washing his car outside his home in London through his wife about Powel’s waiting on the phone. He took just 1 hr to decide on the offer and decided to move to New Delhi. The reason for chosing India he has mentioned that he wanted to be part of growing world power like India and his another interest is China.
In his address to the students here he has briefly explained about India-US strategic relationships in business,defence and international affairs. He has mentioned about the creation of CEO forum comprising of top 10 CEO’s from each countries to further increase the level of economic cooperation between two countries. He has mentioned that President Bush administration is very much willing to see India as major world power and in this direction only the secretary of state Condolina Rice on her visti to India made a candid open statement that US ready to help India to become a world power.
Dr. Mulford also delved on some economic and socio-health issues like outsourcing to India and HIV-AIDS initiative. He further added that his government opposition to Iran-India gas pipeline, his government’s support to Pakistan financially and militarily in combating international terrorism. The reason he has attributed to the opposition for the India-Iran gas pipeline is due to its economic non-viablity. I dont know why he is worrying about this project infact Indian has to worry for that not Dr. Mulford. He has made a mention about rare red carpet welcome extended to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh at White House by President Bush during Dr. Singh's last visit to US. He was very proud to mention that Dr. Singh was gifted a black tie and the one to one meeting with President Bush was went off very cordially without any prepared documents and aids, it was like personal man to man relation, ie personal rapport. Dr. Mulford also mentioned about the environmental issues like green house gas emissions by US when asked by a student. He has mentioned about government-to-government contact, University-to-University contact, hospital-to-hospital, military to military, financial to financial, company-to-company contact etc.
He has mentioned about US relations with India and compared it to its relation with China, North Korea, Taiwan and Pakistan. He cautioned that UN is very much indifferent to US, and few terrorist exporting countries are opposing US moves on the floor of UN and the world’s oldest democracy was not confident in UN because of the indifferent attitude of few countries. He has explained about why U.S not supporting India openly for her bid to the permanent membership in the security council to India alignment with three other countries Germany, Japan and Brazil for the permanent members in the security council of UN. It is well known that US would support Japan not the other contenders. Also, he added that U.S is willing to reform the U.N but not the expansion of Security Council since there are other issues has to be taken care of. But he has failed to mention what are the other issues has to be taken care of? He has indicated that the new criteria formulated by the U. S definitely make India only to become a permanent member in the expanded security council. He has failed to give solid answer to why localization of power only in U. S? That’s making new weapons everyday in their labs and asking other nations not to do it.
He has failed to deliver convincing answers to most of the questions put by the students. and in his welcome address, Prof. Ananth mantioned and hoped that students would ask questions that deferent from questions on Visa and drwan lots of claps from audience.
Comment: Not proper arrangement for Mic made, shorter time for interaction, no specific issues. Questions not properly asked by the students. Simply I could sum it it is not up to the mark and its simply waste of time.
