Tuesday, September 04, 2012

US: Pranab is still the External Affairs minister

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department considers Pranab Mukherjee to be India’s foreign minister! More similar gaffes inside...

Truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction does appear to have an irresistible appeal for two of the world’s largest administrative agencies, the US State Department and CIA. The official web portals and communiqués of the US State Department and CIA are splattered with notable misinformation and errors that would be necessarily considered highly affronting at a diplomatic level.

Last week, we showed how both the State Department and CIA confidently misrepresented India’s map (and showed Kashmir as part of Pakistan) on their websites. We had no idea there was more to come – perhaps even ‘the’ reason for why the Americans seem to be making no headway with India on foreign affairs. The US State Department’s official website mentions that the Minister of External Affairs of India is (still) Pranab Mukherjee! S. M. Krishna, the current Foreign Minister of India since May 2009, has been notably left out of the State Department’s official communiqués. Incidentally, Krishna has also met Barack Obama in various forums, including at New York in September 2009. Not all listed information is wrong, though. Some US government letters are thankfully still reaching the right addresses in India. The Home Minister of India is correctly named as P. Chidambaram; and so are some other Indian politicians.

Mistakes on the CIA and State Department’s websites are not only India-centric but can be found in the case of other countries too. What’s interesting is that, in spite of the official websites of these respective countries portraying genuine information, the US has failed to recognise the same in its own records.