When Kissinger got Delhi belly

They met for just one hour 35 years ago. But the image of Richard Nixon shaking Mao Zedong's hand is regarded as one of those moments that changed history. What's less well known says historian and writer Margaret MacMillan, in her book Nixon and Mao, is the unwitting cameo India played in making that handshake happen.
MacMillan says when Nixon, notorious as "a scourge of Communists" became convinced that the world needed to "end China's angry isolation" he knew if the diplomatic gambit misfired he could lose the presidential elections.Mao didn't have to worry about elections. But meeting the American president would be a sharp U-turn for the Great Helmsman. His regime had banished thousands of Chinese accused of Western influence to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.
But Washington had no idea if the Chinese would even want the Americans to visit. The go-between was American ally Pakistan. General Yahya Khan had good relations with China, especially after the 1962 Indo-China. If Nixon wanted to send a message to Beijing, his national security advisor Henry Kissinger would deliver an unsigned letter typed on ordinary notepaper to Agha Hilaly, the Pakistani ambassador to Washington, who then took it toYahya, who then called in the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan and read it out to him. "I think Kissinger enjoyed it. He liked secret stuff," laughs MacMillan.
When Nixon decided to send Kissinger to Beijing to find out if a visit was feasible an elaborate drama was planned to throw everyone off-track says MacMillan. The visit was such a secret even Vice President Spiro Agnew didn't know and had to be dissuaded from a trip that would have placed him in Taiwan just as Kissinger landed in Beijing. Kissinger, says MacMillan, set up a "boring fact finding trip to Asia." He stopped in Delhi and had dinner with a suspicious Indira Gandhi before flying to Pakistan. There the embassy announced he had come down with "Delhi belly" which he had picked up in India and needed to recover in Yahya's bungalow in the hills. "This annoyed the Indians who always suspected the US preferred Pakistan to India," says MacMillan.
They were not wrong. Declassified documents show that in private conversations the Nixon and Kissinger called Indira Gandhi "an old witch" and "a bitch." "The Indians are no goddamn good," complained Nixon. Eventually leaving his own plane conspicuously parked on the runway, Kissinger, disguised in a floppy hat and dark glasses, boarded a PIA plane in Rawalpindi. A reporter for a London newspaper who happened to be at the airport and saw the flurry of security, asked a policeman what was going on. "It's Henry Kissinger, he's going to China," the policeman replied. The reporter rushed a story to London. His bossed nixed it, sure he'd had too much to drink.
While Kissinger met with Chou en-lai, the American ambassador to Pakistan was telling curious staffers and press "that stupid ass (Kissinger) is up there in the Murree bazaar arguing about some horrible piece of rug". Finally Kissinger sent a one-word telegram back to Washington saying 'EUREKA'. That was when Nixon went on television and announced it to a startled America.
In February 1972 Nixon himself was on a plane to China even though he was still not sure he'd get to meet Mao. But when they did, MacMillan says the transcript of the historic visit was almost "banal". Nixon wanted to talk about Vietnam and the Soviet Union but Mao wanted to talk philosophy. But the symbolism of the handshake was bigger than any communiqué. "It really marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War," says MacMillan. The visit rattled China's neighbours. Indira Gandhi warned America and China not to collude in South Asia. MacMillan says she has more respect for Nixon than the present leadership. "The mark of a great leader is to know when to pocket your pride and risk your reputation," she says. "I don't think Bush or Ahmadinejad are likely to make such a gesture."
So it seems the old Vulcan proverb that Mr. Spock would cite on Star Trek still holds true: Only Nixon can go to China.