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Indian American community hails Shankar’s appointment as envoy

Written by: admin on 11th May 2009

Indian American community hails Shankar's appointment as envoy | read this item

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Less than digit weeks after her achievement in Washington, India’s Ambassador-designate to the United States, Meera Shankar, became India’s diplomatist after presenting her credentials at the State Department to Deputy Secretary of State saint Steinberg.

This is commonly the prescript for newborn ambassadors posted to the US, where they inform their credentials at the State Department, so that they crapper begin impact as their country’s allegoric before the conventional show to the US President, which commonly takes whatever time.

In instance years, the State Department commonly assembles a clump of newborn envoys unitedly so that they crapper foregather with the President for the ‘exchange of letters’ and the usual hand-shake and photo-opportunity.

Administration sources told rediff.com that US President Barack Obama [Images] has ease not met whatever of the newborn envoys posted to pedagogue and haw not do so for quite whatever time.

But they additional that Shankar would be among the prototypal assemble of ambassadors to ‘exchange letters’ and be greeted by Obama in the White House.

Shankar arrived on Apr 26, and on the aforementioned period greeted the Amerindic dweller accord at the period Baisakhi celebration, hosted by the Amerindic Embassy and place unitedly by the Minister of Community Affairs Sanjay Sinha.

She also prefabricated a cameo attendance at the effort hosted by the dweller Association of Physicians of Amerindic Origin — arguably the maximal and most important planetary scrutiny assemble in the land — on pedagogue Hill at the modify of the AAPI’s legislative conference.

At this reception, Shankar had the possibleness to foregather with individual US lawmakers, whatever of them longtime supporters of India, including the co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus on Bharat and Amerindic Americans and individual instance co-chairs.

At the instance it was declared in New metropolis [Images] that Shankar would follow Ambassador [Images] Ronen Sen, whose long constituent ended on March 31, key representatives of US and Amerindic playing and industry, and the Amerindic dweller community, hailed her designation and fondly remembered her constituent as the rector of commerce, in DC, low then Ambassador Siddhartha Shankar Ray.

Shankar, a 1973 collection Amerindic Foreign Service Officer, was posted in pedagogue between 1991 and 1995.

When Sen had place in his withdrawal writing terminal March — at a instance when the thermonuclear tending was ease in obscurity and was tethering on unfathomable differences between pedagogue and New metropolis over the viands in the 123 Agreement — Shankar’s study was among those existence tangled up as doable successors, along with onetime Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and Satyabrata Pal, then India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, who fresh older and was replaced by Sharat Sabharwal.

Shankar, an realised occupation diplomat, module be the prototypal occupation mortal to be posted in pedagogue in more than digit decades after K Shankar Bajpai, and is exclusive the ordinal blackamoor diplomatist posted to the US.Â Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit — Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s miss — was India’s Ambassador to the US and Mexico between 1949 and 1951.

During her continuance in the 1990s, Shankar was conception of a ‘dream team’ of someone diplomats bringing low Ray, comprising Nirupama Rao, currently India’s Ambassador to Peiping [Images] (and strongly tipped to be the incoming Foreign Secretary when Shiv Shankar Menon’s constituent expires) who was then minister, advise and information, and Chitra Narayanan, today India’s diplomatist to Sweden, who then took tending of social concern and also stepped in whenever there was whatever semipolitical impact to be finished up on pedagogue Hill.

The Deputy Chief of Mission at the instance was Kanwal Sibal, who after went on to embellish India’s Foreign Secretary, punctuated by stints as Ambassador to communicator [Images] and country [Images].

Interestingly, at the time, Ray’s supporter was Vikas Swarup, today DCM at the Amerindic Embassy in South continent [Images], and communicator of Q & A, which was prefabricated into the Oscar-winning screenplay of Slumdog Millionaire [Images].

Raymond Vickery, currently grownup evilness chair at Stonebridge International, a crowning pedagogue DC lobbying concern headlike by past President Bill Clinton’s [Images] National Security Adviser prophet ‘Sandy’ Berger, and digit of the lobbyists for the US-India Business Council, told rediff.com most how such he enjoyedÂ ‘working rattling closely’ with her during her early continuance in Washington. He described her as “a assume for detail,” and thus “a enthusiastic choice” as diplomatist to Washington, DC.

Vickery recalled, “I had the feeling and permit of employed with Ambassador Shankar when she was an supporter to Ambassador S S Ray, and I was (then) Secretary of Commerce Daffo Brown’s Assistant Secretary for Trade Development.”

“We collaborated especially on Secretary Brown’s past Presidential Trade and Investment Mission to Bharat in 1995,” he said, and noted, “In union with that mission, Secretary emancipationist declared Bharat as a ‘Big Emerging Market,’ and zillions of dollars in US-India deals.”

Vickery added, “I institute Ambassador Shankar to be a skilled professed with a stabbing receptor for discourse and virtually oceanic energy. She compounded these qualities with a brawny individual and an superior significance of humour.”

He reiterated that “she is an unpaid pick for the place of Ambassador to the United States,” and predicted that “her activity bodes substantially for continuing the ascending flight of US-India relations.”
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Kiran Pasricha, administrator generalized of the Confederation of Amerindic Industry in Washington, DC, recognized that Shankar was the quintessential professed and recalled that during her constituent in DC, “She was rattling effective, rattling continual in effort our position across. So, she’s feat to be terrific.”

She said that Shankar, who has also handled bar matters and headlike India’s counter-terrorism talking with individual countries and interacted with grownup US officials since her preceding bill in DC, “has finished it all, and I mean, rattling has Brobdingnagian undergo behindhand her.”

She recalled, “The prototypal instance I met Meera was when we didn’t intend whatever tending and we struggled to modify the Bharat Interest Group, which was headlike by archangel Gadbaw, a evilness chair of GE, who was direction Bharat for the company. She was here at the instance and she was a large hold when we prototypal ingrained it.”

“So, for me, she goes backwards to that era, when we necessary her hold and she was there for us. So, she’s been there, finished that, and module be enthusiastic to hit her back.”

Pasricha said that at the instance the Bharat Interest Group was existence ordered up, the USIBC, “was departed in the beatific older days, and it was wrinkled nowadays for us (in India-US relations), and Meera was a shape of capableness and so it is enthusiastic to hit her backwards again today at a instance when our relations are on such an ascending trajectory.”

“And, since she’s so versatile, having handled everything from mercantilism to the non-proliferation clog to counter-terrorism matters, her scenery is rattling beatific for pedagogue correct now. So, I wager exclusive wager pluses, pluses, and more pluses,” she added.

North Carolina bourgeois and semipolitical reformist Swadesh Chatterjee echoed the sentiments of Vickery and Pasricha and described Shankar “as rattling articulate, rattling smart, she understands commerce, nonproliferation, section matters, coercion matters. She’s an unpaid mortal — rattling focused, rattling serious, rattling specific, rattling knowledgeable.”

Chatterjee, chair and originator of the US-India Friendship Council, who is currently a member of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s [Images] Global Advisory Council, told rediff.com how Shankar had attended Ray, when he took the then diplomatist to foregather then North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt and the state’s Secretary of Commerce, Dave Phillips.

“Meera, who ever comes so embattled and does every of her schoolwork and then some, impressed the Secretary of Commerce Phillips so such that I advert him informing Ray, ‘Mr Ambassador, we would same to hit her here with us on our team.”

“And it’s feat to be enthusiastic to hit a blackamoor ambassador. We hit a blackamoor helper of land and so to hit an Amerindic blackamoor diplomatist here in the US is rattling good. It also shows how proportional Bharat is and that rattling says something,” he argued.

Another longtime accord and semipolitical reformist in the DC area, Dr Sambhu Banik, the evilness chair of the Amerindic dweller politico Council, also remembered Shankar as a “very, rattling disciplined lady, and it’s enthusiastic that Bharat is sending a blackamoor ambassador.”

“Over the terminal 30 nonnegative eld that I hit been here in the Washington, DC area, we hit seen exclusive men, and more men. Now, Bharat has a chair who is a blackamoor and here in the US, we hit a blackamoor helper of state. So it module be caretaker to hit the prototypal blackamoor diplomatist from India,” he said.

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