October 19, 2004 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Most Indians know of a country called New Zealand only because it is has a reasonably good cricket team, and because John Wright, a former Kiwi skipper, is the Indian team’s current coach. Apart from this little engagement, bilateral relations between India and New Zealand do not amount to much.
So it is rather curious that New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark made some comments about the Kashmir issue, that were in the least, insensitive to the ears of her Indian hosts. While Clark has achieved a reputation for straight talk at the risk of alienating friends, it is quite uncertain what she expected to achieve when she made those remarks so close to her official visit to India.
When Helen Clark arrives in India carrying such baggage, it is unlikely that bilateral relations between the two countries will progress much beyond another set of cricket tours.
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