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up still talking to each other, and the Indian press, despite the absence of anything new and definite, gave us reasonable coverage the following day.
9.
I am sure that the lesson from this is that in future we cannot allow the often trivial and ill-thought out but nonetheless passionate complaints of the Indians to fester for as long as we have in the past. Far better to answer quickly, giving those details that we have and promising the rest as soon as they are available, than for there to be silence for some months. Half the problem is to convince the Indians that we care about their worries regarding the Sikh extremists in Britain, and will do our utmost within our laws to help them.
10. I am sure that David Gillmore and Andrew Burns have this very much in mind. They will need to set up a suitable mechanism with Roy Harrington, the useful Home Office official who was with us, quickly before he is moved on to another job in January. For there is little doubt in my mind that the problem will continue. The Government of India is faced with so many regional problems in both Southern and Northern states and of these Punjab is the worst - that it is impossible to imagine that out of 300,000 Sikhs in Britain some will not continue publicly to demand and to work for an independent Khalistan.
11.
With our Draft Extradition Treaty we were trying to make bricks without straw since the Home Office had not allowed us to give any more ground since your visit in April on the three points demanded by the Indians: removal of the humanitarian safeguard, retrospectivity and "grave effects". However I explained, both in plenary session and privately to Natwar Singh, that our latest draft represented the furthest in substance that this Government would move. He is not an expert on the subject but I think there is a chance that he will try to persuade his Ministerial colleagues, depending on their progress with the Canadians, that there is enough in our draft for it to be presented in Delhi as a political success. This may yet take some time but the Government of India has a real need to show publicly that they have got some worthwhile measures out of us.
12. I found Natwar Singh an interesting and complex character. His father-in-law, now dead, was the leading Sikh Prince at the time of independence. He himself might rather be an essayist than a Foreign Office Minister but in middle age he has thrown in his lot with the Congress Party, is said to be ambitious politically and appears to be very close to Rajiv Gandhi. He was less Anglophobe than I had expected and became progressively more friendly as our talks went on, ending up with nearly two hours à deux, ranging over every subject under the sun while the Joint Communique was drafted by hard working officials. he will come to London soon.
I hope
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/13.