...
The heat of the speech in New Delhi had not yet dissipated, while London's response was very cold.
At the press conference at Downing Street No. 10, the Prime Minister's spokesperson, when pressed, merely raised an eyebrow: "We have noted the statement from the Indian government, but at this stage, there's no further comment."
Before the words even fell, he turned and left, leaving a group of reporters with recorders looking at each other in dismay.
The phone at the Foreign Office was ringing off the hook, as media from Delhi to New York, like sharks smelling blood, kept calling. The operators kept repeating the same official line into the receivers: "This matter involves complex historical intricacies and requires careful study."
It wasn't until the afternoon of the third day that a curious reporter from The Sun caught a deputy secretary from the Foreign Office as he was leaving a pub.
