Mukherjee at the UN. (On Assignment)

New Delhi, Oct. 2: India finally invoked its democratic credentials on the eve of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary and asked the Myanmar junta to launch an inquiry into the use of force against dissident monks.

Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee met Myanmarese counterpart U Nyan Win on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York yesterday and told him “India hoped to see peace, prosperity and stability in Myanmar”.

Mukherjee’s comments, a day after army chief Deepak Kapoor had thrown his weight behind maintaining good relations with the military regime, are intended to restore the balance and, perhaps, even walk the Buddha’s middle path.

The sight of soldiers brutalising monks during pro-democracy protests on the streets of Yangon might have persuaded Delhi to overcome its paralytic stupor and withdraw from its pragmatic foreign policy in favour of the junta.

However, an official media release was careful to exclude any criticism lest it upset Yangon to the point that it shut Delhi out of all business contracts, especially petroleum, and transferred them to China.

Mukherjee possibly realised that Delhi’s pragmatic approach was not going down well at home. Even the Left parties, critical of the government on the Indo-US nuclear deal, have opposed the recent events in Myanmar.

According to the release, the minister said “that as a close and friendly neighbour, India hoped to see peace, prosperity and stability in Myanmar. (He) expressed the hope that the process of national reconciliation and political reform, initiated by the government of Myanmar, would be taken forward expeditiously”.

There was no word on what the Myanmarese minister told Mukherjee, whether he heard him out politely or simply agreed to disagree.

Delhi has been weighing its options since the pro-democracy protests in Myanmar have snowballed, especially in view of China’s overwhelming influence in the country.

But with Beijing refusing to show its hand over support to India on the nuclear deal at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, it appears Delhi has been persuaded to stand up to the pro-Chinese-Myanmarese military.

The normally secretive foreign office has admitted, a week later, that foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon met the UN special envoy on Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, in New York on September 24.

The foreign office believes that the Menon-Gambari meeting helped the UN envoy on his trip to Myanmar that ended today.