'My apologies; I have high regard for Indira'

WASHINGTON: In the pantheon of quotable leaders, Indira Gandhi is not exacly the oracle.
Yet, US President George Bush invoked the late Indian Prime Minister in a speech on Thursday, perhaps to atone for the abuse his Republican forbears had heaped on her.
"Indira Gandhi spoke of poverty and need as the greatest polluters. The long-term answer to environmental challenges is rapid, sustained economic progress of poor nations," Bush said while addressing the Smithsonian Institute on environmental issues on Thursday, after his speechwriters had dredged up the anodyne quotes.
Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger, who had added to Richard Nixon's slur calling Mrs Gandhi an "old witch" and "bitch" with references to Indians as hypocritical and sanctimonious "bastards" and "sons of bitches" issued a mea culpa in an interview to NDTV.
"I regret that these words were used. I have extremely high regard for Mrs Gandhi as a statesman," Kissinger said, adding that "The fact that we were at cross purposes at that time was inherent in the situation but she was a great leader who did great things for her country."
Kissinger, who is now a big votary for Indo-US ties and was among the first to rationalise Indian nuclear tests in 1998, said the US recognises that "India is a global power, that it is a strategic partner of the US on the big issues."
Kissinger did not return messages left by TOI at his New York office of Kissinger & Associates, but in the television interview he asked the corrosive remarks, which he characterised as informal conversation, be taken in context.
"This was somebody letting off steam at the end of a meeting in which both President Nixon and I were emphasising that we had gone out of our way to treat Mrs Gandhi very cordially" he said. "There was disappointment at the results of the meeting. The language was Nixon language."
But the historical records of the period released by the state department this week leave little doubt that Nixon and Kissinger turned a blind eye to the genocide carried out by Pakistan in what is now Bangladesh, ignoring frantic cables from American diplomats in the region and dismissing reports in the American media and sentiments in Congress as "soft-headed" liberalism.
In the many transcripts released, Nixon and Kissinger are sometimes joined by then Secretary of State Warren Rogers in their distaste for India of 1971.
"I agree fully with the idea that we ought to tilt toward Pakistan...My problem is I dislike the Indians so goddamn much. I had trouble even being reasonable with them," Rogers says in one conversation.
Nixon: Right. Well, in tilting toward them for 25 years, it has only gotten us a kick in the pants.
It's not just Indira and India who are at the receiving end of the toxic American tongue. Nixon calls Kenneth Keating, then U.S envoy to India a "traitor" because of his sympathies to New Dehhi. "That son-of-abitch is a total demagogue" Nixon says about Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in one conversation. He later calls Senator Edward Kennedy a "jerk" because he sought more aid to India.