Abuja, December 5
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee arrived in Abuja last evening for attending the December 5-8 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). From the brief interaction he had with the media en route to Abuja it was clear that his heart and mind were in Delhi because of the unexpected windfall in favour of the BJP in the state Assembly elections held on December 1. His absence from the Abuja summit would have sent out wrong diplomatic signals. As it is, the organisation is having to cope with the charge of the white nations adopting a racist stand on Zimbabwe’s re-entry to the Commonwealth. However, Mr Vajpayee will spend just two days here before he takes the early morning flight for home from Abuja, skipping the December 7 deliberations and the concluding session on December 8.

Mr Vajpayee is a keen student of international affairs. Had the timing of the poll results and the CHOGM schedule not got mixed up, he would have wanted to play a more visible role in sorting out various issues bedevilling CHOGM. Zimbawe is just one of them. India would also have taken a substantially different line on the re-entry of Pakistan, suspended from the Commonwealth in 1999 after the military coup. Now with diplomatic relations between the neighbours improving fast India would not want to harp too loudly on the flaws in the democratic structure in Pakistan.

The Prime Minister had already cancelled his Ghana visit after the end of CHOGM because of the fast-paced developments at home. Given his Nehruvian interest in creating forums to protect the interests of south from the domineering north, his Ghana trip would have served the purpose of selling the idea of reviving the non-aligned movement.

Kwmae Nkrumah of Ghana, Abdel Gamal Nasser of Egypt and Jawaharlal Nehru were the founding Ns of the movement at a time when the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the USA was making smaller nations feel extremely insecure. Josef Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Sukarno of Indonesia too had made a substantial contribution in giving shape and substance to the idea of neutrality in a divided world order.