Congress, Shashi Tharoor differ on Modi-Trump meeting

New Delhi: The All India Congress Committee and the party's erudite parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor on Saturday appeared poles apart in judging the Modi-Trump meeting in France and about the Prime Minister's dealing with the US President on the recent killing of three Indian sailors on an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman.

While the AICC spokesperson alleged that Modi surrendered Indian interests before Trump and failed to seek an apology for the killing of the sailors, Tharoor felt the PM-President meeting warmed up the India-US ties and that Modi forcefully took up the issue of the sailors.

"PM Modi has effectively surrendered the basic dignity of our great nation to the whims and fancies of his dear friend 'Doland Trump'! While PM Modi orchestrated narratives within his compliant media ecosystem claiming crucial intervention, grand meetings, monumental diplomacy and historic breakthroughs, the hard reality remains that three Indian seafarers were killed by the US air strike in the Gulf of Oman and PM Modi and his government neither demanded an unconditional apology from Mr Trump's administration nor secured even the most elementary expression of remorse," AICC spokesperson Pawan Khera said. He also asked why the Trump administration renamed the US Indo-Pacific Command as the US-Pacific Command.


However, on Modi's meeting with Trump, Tharoor told a news agency: "It seems to have gone a long way towards warming up relations once again between the two countries because the feedback I've been getting from various sources on both sides is that the meeting was conducted in a very cordial and warm atmosphere..."

On the sailors' issue, Tharoor said: "...the Prime Minister rather forcefully made his point, both in the public speech and, I understand, privately...you have to understand that we have sailors in various ships. It was not an Indian ship, but even in other countries' flag vessels there are lots of Indian crew and sailors. And as long as they are civilians doing commercial shipping, they should not be treated like combatants in a war."