‘PM isolated on Pakistan’

After a meeting with India's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan in August 2009, American Ambassador Timothy Roemer was driven to the conclusion that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was isolated within his own government in his "great belief" in talks and negotiations with Pakistan.

During the interaction, Mr. Narayanan, who had been described by the Embassy in a January 12, 2005 cable (25259: confidential) as a long-time Gandhi family loyalist "who is seen as part of the traditional 'coterie' around Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi," came through as a hardliner on Pakistan, never afraid to voice his differences with Prime Minister Singh.

In an August 11, 2009 cable (220281: confnoforn), sent a day after the meeting, Mr. Roemer noted that Mr. Narayanan, a former chief of the Intelligence Bureau who is now Governor of West Bengal, readily conceded that he had differences with Prime Minister Singh on Pakistan. The Prime Minister was a "great believer" in talks and negotiations with Islamabad, but Mr. Narayanan himself was "not a great believer in Pakistan."

The cables have been accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks.

The NSA recounted to the Ambassador how after the Prime Minister spoke of India's "shared destiny" with Pakistan, he said: "you have a shared destiny; we don't."

Mr. Roemer's take on this: "Narayanan made the comments above with some jovia [...]