NEW DELHI, 2 July 2005 — Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said yesterday he regretted his use of strong language against ex-Indian Premier Indira Gandhi after his 1971 remarks were made public causing a storm in India.
Kissinger told Indian television news channel NDTV that he had “high regard” for Indira and the strong remarks were a “one-time event”.
The former US official was referring to comments he made in a conversation with then-President Richard Nixon in the White House in November, 1971, the transcripts of which were declassified earlier this week.
“All of (this) has to be seen in the context of a Cold War atmosphere 35 years ago when I had paid a secret visit to China when President Nixon had not yet been there and India had made a kind of an alliance with the Soviet Union,” Kissinger said.
“It was in that context that we assessed the immediate situation and in fact we were angry. We wanted to avoid a war between India and Pakistan because we thought it would have been very damaging,” Kissinger said in the interview with the news channel.
The remarks came at the end of a meeting between Nixon and Indira, who had gone to Washington to discuss the growing possibility of war with Pakistan.
India was a close ally of the then Soviet Union.
“We really slobbered over the old witch,” Nixon told Kissinger, who was then the national security adviser, of his meeting with strong-willed Indira the previous day. Indians are “a slippery, treacherous people,” the president said.
Kissinger told Nixon: “The Indians are bastards anyway. They are starting a war there.”
“They are the most aggressive goddamn people around there,” he was quoted as saying in the build-up to the India-Pakistan war, which led to the creation of Bangladesh 35 years ago.
Yesterday Kissinger said he regretted the words used in the conversation.
“In any event I regret these words were used. I have extremely high regards for Mrs. Gandhi as a statesman.
“The fact that we were at cross purposes at that time was inherent in the situation but she was a great leader who did great things for the country.”
Kissinger described himself as a “strong supporter and promoter” of the warming relationship between India and the United States.
The release of the transcripts and other newly declassified material coincided with the visit to the US by Indian Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the signing of a landmark military accord along with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
India’s Congress party Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to visit the US at the invitation of President George W. Bush from July 18 to 20.
The Congress, India’s oldest political entity and headed by Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi, had condemned the strong language used by Kissinger and Nixon.
“This kind of language does not behove any head of state,” Congress party spokesman Anand Sharma told AFP in New Delhi.
“Also, distasteful expressions used against the popularly elected prime minister of another country and as well as damning the entire Indian people is surely distasteful and unacceptable in any civilized debate,” he said.
Sharma, however, said comments made 34 years ago had little relevance, especially at a juncture when relations between India and the US were improving.
