INDIA wants to ensure the furore over the arrest and strip-search of a female diplomat in New York does not do lasting harm to its “valuable relationship” with the US, its foreign minister said on Thursday(December 19).
“I can’t believe that either side wants to put at risk a very valuable relationship in which we have made an enormous investment,” Salman Khurshid told India’s CNN-IBN network.
“Things happen between friends, even things that are terrible.
“The whole thing about friendship is that it survives, survives the test of this nature.”
Khurshid was speaking the day after US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with India’s National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon to try to ease tensions sparked by last Thursday (December 12)’s arrest of New York-based diplomat Devyani Khobragade.
However Preet Bharara, the US federal prosecutor handling her case, has insisted Khobragade was arrested in the “most discreet” way possible, was never handcuffed and was searched by a female deputy marshal in private.
Khurshid, who on Wednesday (December 18) pledged to bring Khobragade back home at any price, reiterated his criticism at what he called the “irrational and unacceptable behaviour” of US authorities and voiced a sense of hurt.
“When the emotions run high, when there is a sense of hurt…then obviously you are called upon to do a little more than you’d do in normal times,” he said.
