Barack Obama Used African-American Card to Triumph over PM Modi, Claims bookHot Buzz

June 06, 2018 06:41
Barack Obama Used African-American Card to Triumph over PM Modi, Claims book

(Image source from: Tribune India)

The publication on Barack Obama's presidency that will hit stands today states that Former United State President Barack Obama used his African American card to triumph over India Prime Minister Narendra Modi during terminal phase of phase of talk terms at the Paris summit in 2015, where India was the last holdout as its officials were the hard-bitten negotiators.

"When we got to Paris, the main holdout was India," Obama's then top foreign policy and national security aide for eight years Ben Rhodes writes in his book 'The World at It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House'.

Ben Rhodes was deputy national security adviser for strategic communications to Obama.

Rhodes giving a blow-by-blow report of the past phase of U.S.-India negotiations on climate alteration by penning at one point of time in Paris, Obama himself get into a in-person conversation to persuade two Indian officials of the need for India to be part of the deal merely failing to cut ice with two Indian negotiators.

"For nearly an hour, Modi kept underscoring the fact that he had three hundred million people with no electricity, and coal was the cheapest way to grow the Indian economy; he cared about the environment, but he had to worry about a lot of people mired in poverty. Obama went through arguments about a solar initiative we were building, the market shifts that would lower the price of clean energy," writes Rhodes in his book.

"But he still hadn't addressed a lingering sense of unfairness, the fact that nations like the United States had developed with coal, and were now demanding that India avoid doing the same thing. 'Look', Obama finally said, 'I get that it's unfair. I'm African-American'. Modi smiled knowingly and looked down at his hands. He looked genuinely pained," he writes.

"We were scheduled to meet with India's prime minister, Narendra Modi. Obama and a group of us waited outside the meeting room, when the Indian delegation showed up in advance of Modi. By all accounts, the Indian negotiators had been the most difficult," he writes.

"Obama asked to talk to them, and for the next twenty minutes, he stood in a hallway having an animated argument with two Indian men. I stood off to the side, glancing at my BlackBerry, while he went on about solar power," says Rhodes. This was something unprecedented and not part of the protocol. he adds.

"Modi, who had ambitions to be a transformative leader of India, and a person of global stature, was torn. This is one reason why we had done the deal with China; if India was alone, it was going to be hard for Modi to stay out," Rhodes writes in the book.

By Sowmya Sangam

If you enjoyed this Post, Sign up for Newsletter

(And get daily dose of political, entertainment news straight to your inbox)

Rate This Article
(0 votes)