As anger boiled in normally US-friendly India and the government retaliated against US diplomats, Secretary of State John Kerry tried to end the row in a telephone call with India's national security advisor Shivshankar Menon. "As a father of two daughters about the same age as Devyani Khobragade, the secretary empathises with the sensitivities we are hearing from India about the events that unfolded after Ms. Khobragade's arrest," a State Department statement said.
Speaking to Menon, Kerry "expressed his regret, as well as his concern that we not allow this unfortunate public issue to hurt our close and vital relationship with India," it said. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said it was "particularly important to Secretary Kerry that foreign diplomats serving in the United States are accorded respect and dignity just as we expect our own diplomats should receive overseas."
The White House also tried to quell the rift, with spokesman Jay Carney saying that "this isolated episode is not indicative of the close and mutually respectful ties that we share." Khobragade was arrested on December 12 in New York for allegedly paying a domestic worker a fraction of the minimum wage and for lying about the employee's salary in a visa application. She is free on bail. The fury in India grew Wednesday after an email from Khobragade in which the diplomat said she had been repeatedly stripped and cavity-searched by the US authorities after her detention.
"I must admit that I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, in a hold-up with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity," she said in the email. "I got the strength to regain composure and remain dignified, thinking that I must represent all of my colleagues and my country with confidence and pride."
OUTRAGE GROWS IN INDIA The revelation that a high-ranking diplomat could be subjected to such treatment at the hands of the United States has caused huge offence in a country that sees itself as an emerging world power. In an address to parliament on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid said it was his "duty to bring the lady back." "We have to restore her dignity and I will do it at any cost," he added.