Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has expressed regret over blunt, anti-Indian commments captured for posterity on one of the late President Richard Nixon’s tapes (these are the tapes that are the news reporters’ gifts that keep on giving):
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has expressed regret over anti-India comments he made to former US President Richard Nixon.
“The Indians are bastards,” Mr Kissinger said shortly before the India-Pakistan war of 1971, it was revealed this week.
Mr Kissinger also called former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi a “bitch” during the conversation.
At the time, the US saw India as too close to the Soviet Union.
The conversation was revealed in documents the US State Department declassified this month on US foreign policy of the time.
According to the documents, President Nixon called Indira Gandhi an “old witch” in a conversation with Mr Kissinger.
Mr Kissinger, 82, has now told a the private Indian television channel NDTV that his comments did not reflect American policy during the 1970s.
“I regret that these words were used. I have extremely high regard for Mrs Gandhi as a statesman,” he said.
“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 her country.”
It needs to be said: Kissinger’s apology, as reported by the BBC, shows class.
Mr Kissinger told NDTV that this was not a “formal conversation”.
“This was somebody letting off steam at the end of a meeting in which both President Nixon and I were emphasising that we had gone out of our way to treat Mrs Gandhi very cordially,” he said.
“There was disappointment at the results of the meeting. The language was Nixon language.”
Kissinger stressed that India’s relations with the United States have strengthened since then. But none of this is to say that Mr. Kissinger made him friends within the ruling Congress party:
“It is shocking that the head of state of a country and his principal adviser chose to use such intemperate language against a popularly elected prime minister of another country,” party spokesman Anand Sharma said. “These words have no relevance today… we hope the present US leader also rejects these remarks which were definitely in very poor taste.”
Well, he TRIED to be contrite so let’s give him an A (or at least a B) for effort.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.