We care deeply for Canada just as we care deeply for India: US envoy Eric Garcetti

On India-Canada diplomatic row, US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti says "Canada is a dear friend, partner and ally and happens to be our northern neighbour. We care deeply for Canada just as we care deeply for India. I think that moments like this don't define our relationship, but they certainly can slow down progress...

With an active criminal investigation, I hope that we can make sure that perpetrators are brought to justice and that we can all allow the space for that information and that investigation to occur before anybody leaps to judgment"

 CIA, ISI encouraged Sikh terrorism: Ex-RAW official

The Richard Nixon administration in the US had initiated a "covert action plan" in collusion with Gen Yahya Khan`s government in Pakistan in 1971 to encourage a separatist movement in Punjab, a former top officer of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has said.

In 2007, it was reported that The Richard Nixon administration

in the Us had initiated a "covert action plan" in collusion

with Gen Yahya Khan`s government in Pakistan in 1971 to

encourage a separatist movement in Punjab, a former top

officer of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has said.

"This plan envisaged the encouragement of a separatist

movement among the Sikhs for an Independent state to be called

Khalistan. ...In 1971, one saw the beginning of a joint

covert operation by the US intelligence community and

Pakistan`s ISI to create difficulties for India in Punjab," B Raman, who retired as Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, says in his book.

In the book "the Kaoboys of R&AW -- down the memory lane"

that is yet to be published, he said the US interest in Punjab

militancy "continued for a little more than a decade and

tapered off after the assassination of Indira Gandhi" by two

Sikh security guards on October 31, 1984.

Elaborating, Raman said Jagjit Singh Chauhan, a

Sikh leader from Punjab, went to the UK and took over the

leadership of the defunct Sikh Home Rule Movement and renamed

it after Khalistan.

The then Pakistani military ruler Yahya Khan invited

Chauhan to Pakistan, "lionised" him as a leader of Sikhs and

handed over some Sikh holy relics kept in Pakistan, which

Chauhan took to the UK to win a following in the Sikh

diaspora.

Chauhan also went to New York, met officials of the

United Nations and some American journalists and alleged human

rights violations of Sikhs in India. "These meetings were

discreetly organised by officials of the US National Security

Council Secretariat then headed by (Henry) Kissinger," the

former R&AW officer says.