Panetta goofs up, terms India a ‘threat’

Panetta goofs up, terms India a ‘threat’

Another ‘Oops’ moment? In this season of gaffes by top American politicos, it was the turn of no less a person than Defence Secretary Leon Panetta to come up with one of his own. On Thursday, he bracketed ally India with China, describing the two as emerging threats for the US.

“We face the threats from rising powers—China, India, others—that we have to always be aware of. And try to make sure that we always have sufficient force protection out there in the Pacific to make sure they know we’re never going anywhere,” Panetta said during a visit to a shipyard in Groton, Connecticut.

The gaffe was discovered soon enough, and Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby rushed to clarify the matter, asserting that Panetta didn’t intend to suggest that India and China were military threats to the US and that he believed it was important to forge closer military relations with both.

“Any suggestion that he was implying either country was a military threat is just false,” Kirby said, asserting that Panetta was referring instead to the challenges that China and India face “within themselves”.

Panetta, according to Kirby, was referring to “the challenges that we share with them (India and China) as we try to forge better relationships going forward in a very turbulent, dynamic security environment”.

Curiously enough, Panetta’s comments came on a day when President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met on the sidelines of the East Asian summit in Bali and agreed to strengthen US-India relations.

The US Defence Secretary made the comments after touring the Connecticut shipyard where a nuclear-powered, Virginia-class attack submarine was in its final phase of construction.