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majority in the Rajya Sabha, Mrs Gandhi would introduce a new constitution based on Presidential rule (either the French or American pattern). Mr Mohapatra, Secretary of the Congress (I), subsequently confirmed that a Presidential form of government was under consideration. He also said that he was contemplating ways of transforming the Congress I into a cadre party, no matter that this would turn it into an East European-type organisation. Asked about Rajiv, he said that his political education was "going slowly'
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36. The Indian view on Afghanistan was put most cogently by Mr Garekhan, Joint Secretary of the Pakistan and Iran Division of the Ministry of External Affairs. It was necessary to negotiate a withdrawal of the Soviet troops. They could not be forced out. If active opposition to the Soviet presence continued, the Afghan people would get hurt. India was trying to avoid this. The same opinions were expressed, but in a hectoring manner, by Dr Subramaniam Director of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), easily the rudest man I met during the whole of my tour. He accused the West of "moralising" over Afghanistan. The Indians condemned the presence of Soviet troops but recognised there was nothing they or anyone else could do against a super-power. They had, he claimed, kept silent in the past over American misdeeds (Vietnam, Cambodia, Chad, the Lebanon etc). He would not accept the argument that the fact that the Americans had not always acted wisely was no excuse for Soviet folly.
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37. A discussion in the IDSA the next day (fortunately in the absence of the Director) pointed to a disturbing degree of anti- Americanism. The Americans were, for example, blamed for the Soviet presence in Afghanistan in that they had refused offers of friendship by the Taraki régime. Again, their reaction to the murder of Ambassador Dubs in 1979 had been "immature" in that those responsible for the deed had obviously wanted to embitter Afghan-US relations. Washington had merely made sure that they succeeded in their aim. The suggestion that the Americans tended to see things in black and white, as compared with, it was implied, the more subtle Indians, was made in other talks I had during my stay in Delhi.
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