“Yes,” said the chairperson of Idaho Republican Party when asked if the Bush White House was opposed to denying a visa to Modi. The Bush White House was against denying a US visa to the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in 2005, according to a former senior administration official who worked on the national security staff of the then vice-president Dick Cheney. “I do not believe anyone in (the George W Bush) White House spoke in favour of it (denying visa to Modi),” Stephen Yates, who served as the deputy national security advisor to Cheney, told a group of Indian reporters in Cleveland on Thursday. In 2005, the US state department had revoked a visa that Modi had for travelling to the US on the ground of alleged human rights violations during the 2002 Gujarat riots. “The State Department had their ban and frankly a lot of us in the White House felt it was inappropriate,” said Yates, who was part of the Republican Platform Subcommittee on foreign affairs.

Source: Hindustan Times July 23, 2016 10:52 UTC