No role seen for India

Gulf News: India has traditionally been a proponent of peace. We haven't seen them taking an active role in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Why is that?

SHASHI THAROOR: First of all, we've been long friends of the Palestinian people going right back to the beginning of our independence. We are the first non-Arab country to recognise the state of Palestine; the government now is in the process of building a Palestinian embassy in Delhi as a gift from the people of India to Palestine. So our position on Palestine is rather well established for a very long time and we have absolutely no question in our mind that Palestine deserves a state with the attributes of sovereignty as soon as possible. At the same time, we do have relations with Israel. Israel is an important partner of ours in a number of areas and because of that, we are very strongly committed to seeing both sides come out of this with a successful and effective peace process. If you look at the UN resolutions which call for two states living side by side in prosperity and peace that is exactly the Indian vision as well. Before we decide to get involved in this process there must be a desire on the part of the parties to have us involved. Right now, the quartet is in charge of the process and the US in particular has a special role as the preferred intellective of both sides.

Many in this part of the world were surprised by your column on Israel titled: India's Israel envy, which was published in the Israeli daily Haaretz and which compared India's struggle with Pakistan to Israel's with Hamas.

It was a reflection of a certain sentiment in India after the Mumbai attacks and the article was meant to be a rejection of that sentiment and it was meant to make the argument that India is not Israel and should not attack Pakistan the way Israelis attacked Gaza.

So the analogy didn't work?

Not at all and in any case, it was written soon after 26/11 and when the Israeli assault on Gaza had literally just begun. And obviously would not have been published three weeks later had I written it three weeks later without a strong condemnation on what had transpired in Gaza.