New Delhi, Sept 6 : Congress president Sonia Gandhi told US diploamts in 2007 that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was a man of “integrity” that “can be hard to find” in politics, Times of India reported quoting WikiLekas cables.
In an interaction with US diplomats on the nuclear deal, Sonia had said “we all trust him” as he is “straight forward and frank.”
She was responding to the US delegation telling her that Singh's visit to the US had been well received.
Sonia and her advisers kept the focus of their meeting with on the expected timeline for passage of the civil nuclear agreement.
“Gandhi was clearly interested in the Congressmen's suggestions of what the Indian government can do to ease the civil nuclear legislation's passage, which she appeared to view as the key to a broad bilateral relationship,” the cable added.
Indicating how much Prime Minister Manmohan Singh valued the Indo-US nuclear deal, national security adviser Shivshankar Menon - then foreign secretary - told US diplomats that Singh is “sick” at the prospect of facing President George W Bush without moving on the nuclear deal.
In a 2008 US cable detailing the interaction ahead of a G-8 summit in July that year, Menon had said the government was focused on the nuclear deal and that the summit was helping turn the attention on resolving the issue.
Menon had said then foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee shortened his July 1-3 trip in Egypt to spend only one full working day in Cairo. He then revealed PM Singh was “sick” at the prospect of facing Bush.
The foreign secretary had thanked the US ambassador for American restraint “at this sensitive time”, saying “what you have done is exactly right; I am impressed and grateful for the way you have maintained radio silence.”
Menon had added that the one or two errant messages had only been instructive in showing how complicating our public involvement could be at a time of delicate internal negotiations. He had mused about how far the Indo-US ties has developed, saying “we've managed to come so far with the U.S.; we have not done anything like this with anyone else, ever.”
