Clinton awed by Taj Mahal, dismayed by pollution
Reuters News ServiceAGRA - U.S. President Bill Clinton basked in
the splendour of the Taj Mahal yesterday, saying it was a lifetime
dream to see the monument but he regretted the damage pollution has done
to its white marble walls.
Walking hand-in-hand with his daughter Chelsea, Clinton toured the
majestic 17th century mausoleum built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to
honour his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their 14th child.
"I've wanted to come here all my life," Clinton said as he posed before a crush of photographers in the manicured gardens outside the monument, clearly eager to get a closer view. "Now we're going to go look at it."
The building, which has slender minarets at its four corners and an onion dome at its centre, is inlaid inside with arabesques of jade, turquoise, lapis lazuli and more than two dozen other stones.
A masterwork produced at the peak of the Mughal dynasty that ruled India for more than three centuries, the edifice took 22 years to construct and needed an army of 20,000 workers drawn from as far afield as Europe and Central Asia.
The monument has a rich lore, including the story that the bereaved emperor who commissioned it was deposed and imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb in the Agra Fort and spent his final days gazing wistfully at his creation.
Asked if he was awed by the sight, Clinton replied: "How could you not be?"
CLINTON DISMAYED BY POLLUTION
But the president also expressed dismay at the subtle damage that Agra's polluted air has done to the monument.
"Pollution has managed to do what 350 years of wars, invasions and natural disasters have failed to do. It has begun to mar the magnificent walls of the Taj Mahal," Clinton said later in a speech at a hilltop site overlooking the monument.
"A constant effort is required to save the Taj Mahal from human environmental degradation - what some scientists call 'marble cancer,'" he said, adding: "I can't help wondering that if a stone can get cancer, what kind of damage can this pollution do to children."
For the first time since 1991 local authorities opened to a visitor the Taj Mahal's underground chamber where Mumtaz Mahal's remains rest, allowing Clinton to tour the room with shoe covers on his feet to protect its floor.
The visit to the Taj Mahal is the first unabashed tourism that Clinton has indulged in since he arrived in South Asia on Sunday for a six-day visit to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
MIX OF POLICY, PLEASURE
But even here, the president could not resist injecting a little policy-making into his tourism, announcing a U.S.-Indian agreement to cooperate on the environment and clean energy.
It is a topical subject at India's most celebrated monument, which viewed from a distance looms on the banks of a stinking river, almost always enveloped in a haze of dust and smog from belching smokestacks and exhaust fumes.
Environmentalists and the government, worried that the soot and fumes will eventually turn the gleaming white building black, have set to work to save it.
Restrictions have been clamped on industry and motor vehicles have been banned from a swathe of land around the monument in a bid to clean the air around the city.
The U.S. president, however, drove to the monument is one of his regular bullet-proof black Cadillac limousines. Many of the other vehicles in his motorcade were electric-powered.
Clinton, who saw Taj Mahal set against a blue sky on an unusually clear day, used the monument as the backdrop to announce a series of environmental projects that the United States and India will carry out together. These included:
- $200 million in U.S. credit guarantees to fund clean energy projects;
- $20 million to provide a three-year extension of a programme that seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency and the use of cleaner fuels;
- $25 million for a programme that promotes the use of energy efficient technologies and services in India.
The White House also said Clinton had eased sanctions imposed on India after its 1998 nuclear tests to resume U.S. technical assistance to India on clean energy and to allow the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration to re-establish its programmes with India. These aim to improve air quality, tighten environmental policies and reduce pollutants.