varnam

Colin Powell is on a roll. First he pissed off Taiwan. Then he said that he worked as a telephone operator and setup a phone call between the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan. Jaswant Singh replied immediately.

"The way he has gone about claiming credit is a total concoction and a matter of imagination, the way he conjured up biological weapons in Iraq," Singh said. "I don't know whether the State Department of U.S.A., in addition to attempting to run U.S. foreign policy as best as it can, is also a telephone exchange and now is acting as a kind of elocution instructor to South Asia."

As a minister, Singh was believed to have had good relations with his U.S. counterparts. But at the news conference, he said: "The U.S. bureaucracy are world champions in . . . inaction, in finding reason not to do things." He added that the U.S. bureaucracy is three times ahead of its Indian counterpart in "obfuscating, obstructing and ensuring that nothing is done." [India's Ex-Foreign Minister Assails Powell]