New Delhi had lobbied to keep the late diplomat from “meddling in Kashmir.
AB Wire
WASHINGTON, DC: It is no secret that India’s foreign policy establishment wasn’t very pleased when Richard Holbrooke was appointed as the United States Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the beginning of the first Obama administration in January 2009.
Kashmir was also supposed to be part of the job description of Holbrooke, who served as assistant secretary of state under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, but India quietly lobbied to keep him away.
The Washington Post reported at the time that “Indian diplomats, worried about Holbrooke’s tough-as-nails reputation, didn’t want him meddling in Kashmir.”
There were widespread concerns about the late diplomat’s views on Kashmir, which, many in New Delhi thought, were closer to Pakistan’s than that of India.
An email from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which was released recently as part of thousands of pages of electronic communication during her years at Foggy Bottom, reveals that India continued to harbor suspicions about Halbrooke’s motives and asked the State Department to exclude him from a bilateral meeting with then-Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon.
The foreign secretary met Clinton in Washington on March 10, 2015. “The meeting lasted for about half an hour,” the Press Trust of India reported. “Among key issues discussed at the meeting included Sri Lanka, non-proliferation, counter-terrorism including Mumbai and Afghanistan.”
Clinton mentions India’s objection in an email sent on May 4, 2009, to senior aide Jake Sullivan.
She was responding to a mail from Sullivan asking whether the Af-Pak envoy could attend an upcoming bilateral meeting with a delegation from Kazakhstan.
Here is Sullivan’s email:
Holbrooke would like to attend the Kazakhstan bilat. Bill Burns will attend, as will the ambassador and Richard Boucher. I recall that you thought it didn’t make sense for Holbrooke to join the Menon bilat (which Burns also attended) so I wanted to check with you to see if you had views on this.
The mail, with the subject line “Kazakhstan bilat,” was sent at 3:19 pm. Clinton wrote back 49 minutes later:
Ok w me. India raised issues that this doesn’t.
Holbrooke was on the job for less than two years. He died on December 13, 2010.