‘Cautious stance’: Tharoor breaks with Congress; backs govt to resolve Middle East crisis

New Delhi: Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor on Thursday once again took a different position from his party and other opposition parties and supported the center’s position on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli and Iranian conflicts in the Middle East.Tharoor told the Press Trust of India news agency in an interview that he understood the government’s desire to take a cautious stance on the conflict and hoped it would publicly call on both sides to end the war as soon as possible.Tharoor, however, said India should condemn the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei in the US-Israeli attack. “I don’t know to condemn it, but of course we should mourn it. After all (he) was the spiritual leader of a country with which he had friendly relations,” the Congress leader said. He added: “On the day it happened, we should express our public condolences and share the grief of his loved ones and his country, just as we did when President Lacey was killed in a helicopter crash two years ago when we immediately expressed our condolences and declared national mourning.”The Thiruvananthapuram MP said the moment the Iranian embassy opened the book of condolence, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri went to sign it, which he said was a “good thing”.Tharoor said: “But I think we could have done a little more… This is the polite thing to do for any country. For example, if the president of some distant country, with whom we do not even have such a close relationship, became a victim like this, it would be strange for us not to express our condolences.”“But beyond that, I think I understand the administration’s desire to take a cautious stance, for lack of a better word,” he said.Tharoor also said that some countries that are not involved in the conflict on both sides can ask both sides to stop the conflict, and India should be at the forefront in this regard.Tharoor said India has a huge stake in what is happening and its energy security depends on what happens in the Gulf, including its imports of liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas.“We have 9 million citizens living there, they are an important source of remittances, their security and welfare is naturally our top priority, countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia invest in us, we have very important overall trade relations as well as political interests and security cooperation, all of that,” Tharoor said.“You don’t want to see that compromised. So for us, peace and stability in the Middle East and West Asia is extremely important,” he added.This comes as the opposition attacks the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government’s “silence” on the assassination of Khamenei, saying “a compromised prime minister undoubtedly wants to avoid confrontation with his American and Israeli friends.”The opposition condemned the assassination, saying that India condemned Iran’s attacks on Gulf countries but first remained “completely silent” on the US-Israeli attack on Iran.Earlier this month, the Congress party staged a walkout in the Upper House and a protest in the Lower House to express its displeasure over Foreign Minister Jaishankar’s remarks on the situation in West Asia in both houses of Parliament.The party called Jaishankar’s statement “bland” and claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy of “(mis)adventurism”, coupled with the government’s “sabotage” of the Indian external affairs ministry, was pushing India into “vassalage”.Jaishankar said in a statement in Parliament that New Delhi stands for safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries in the region. He argued that allowing Iranian ships to call at Indian ports was the right decision taken on humanitarian grounds.