Delhi's response
Mr. Zafar Sobhan is quite right (February 18) that the Indian Foreign Secretary's statement of 14 February was aimed primarily at intimidating and threatening Bangladesh. He goes on to make the colourful, and entirely convincing, claim that this statement represents India's second punch, following the first punch which was the refusal to attend the Saarc summit. But if this is the case, it raises some intriguing questions about this two-punch attack.
It seems clear that the second punch, the statement, had been in preparation for some time and that India only needed a context in which to launch it. This context was provided by the first punch, the last-minute withdrawal from the Saarc summit. But what was the trigger for the first punch? None other than the horrible outrage of the cold-blooded assassination of Mr. SAMS Kibria.
So are we to believe that India's carefully prepared two-punch policy was totally dependent on the killing of Mr. Kibria on the very weekend before the Saarc summit was due to take place?
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