RASHMEE Z AHMED
http://203.199.93.7/cms.dll/xml/comp/articleshow?artid=28378387
TIMES NEWS NETWORK FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2002 06:43:56 PM ]
LONDON: In an extraordinary and controversial attempt at righting the wrongs of history by wordplay, British foreign secretary Jack Straw has blamed 200 years of imperialism for the worst world crises of the 21st-century, including British complacency over “what happened in Kashmir”.
“India, Pakistan - we made some quite serious mistakes,” Straw said, lamenting the complacency of publishing the “boundaries two days after (Indian) independence. Bad story for us, the consequences are still there”.
Using words that appalled British commentators said could easily have issued from the mouths of Third World student activists rather than the foreign secretary of a country that formerly ruled half the world, Straw said the Kashmir issue, Afghanistan, most West Asian crises including the now-controversial, British-drawn boundaries of Iraq were the result of British involvement.
His words have stirred up a hornet’s nest of angry political debate, with some opposition politicians accusing Straw’s Labour government of “old-fashioned Left-wing guilt” of the sort that prompted another Labour government to grant India its independence.
Straw also pointedly rejected the controversial new doctrine of “liberal (Western) imperialism” recently offered by Prime Minister Blair’s former foreign policy advisor, by means of which the developed West would be emboldened to intervene in developing world disputes.
“I’m not a liberal imperialist,” he said, “…there’s a lot wrong with imperialism. A lot of the problems we are having to deal with now, I have to deal with now, are a consequence of our colonial past.”
Still more unusually, he appeared even to offer empathy and understanding to Britain’s arch-enemy, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, who continues to dispossess white farmers of their land. “…the early (British) colonisers were all about taking land,” Straw admitted.
The interview, which forms the cover feature of the latest left-liberal New Statesman magazine, has caused great excitement and prompted confusion about why a British foreign secretary should eschew more traditional “gunboat diplomacy” for the “tea and tears, sweet-talk and sympathy” model of foreign policy.
The magazine told TNN that the interview had attracted “great interest”. Though some commentators suggested it was a devious ploy, Straw’s frank words appear to have been taken at face value by that leading conservative barometer of British opinion, The Daily Telegraph. In a scathing editorial comment, it said Straw’s views were “maundering self-pity”, which would “weaken Britain’s position internationally”.
In his comments on West Asia, the magazine says Straw began by saying "There’s hardly a country . . . ", before checking himself and going on: “The odd lines for Iraq’s borders were drawn by Brits. The Balfour declaration and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis - again, an interesting history for us but not an entirely honourable one.”