NEW DELHI, 27 March 2005 — Within a day of having expressed “disappointment” at United States’ decision to supply F-16s to Pakistan, New Delhi yesterday “welcomed” the superpower’s move to further “nuclear cooperation” with India.
In Washington, a senior US official said that Washington was ready for a “broader strategic relationship” with New Delhi. During US Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice’s recent visit to India, US had presented an outline of this to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The goal of the outline, developed by President George W. Bush and Rice is “to help India become a major world power by the 21st century,” the US official said. “We understand fully the implications, including the military implications, of that statement,” he said.
The US decision to respond positively to India is not limited to F-16s or F-18s, as expressed by the official, “but beyond that, the US is ready to discuss even more fundamental issues of defense transformation with India, including transformation systems in areas such as command and control, early warning and missile defense.”
India welcomed yesterday the initiatives offered by the US to “upgrade the Indo-US strategic partnership.”
On nuclear cooperation, the spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs Navtej Sarna said: “US government is considering offering civilian nuclear energy and nuclear safety cooperation to India.”
“The decision by the US administration to move forward on nuclear energy cooperation is welcome and reflects an understanding of India’s growing energy requirements. We expect further substantive discussion within the ambit of Indo-US Energy Dialogue, which is proposed to be set up shortly,” he said.
Besides, the US has conveyed its approval of “participation of US defense companies in the bidding for the multirole-combat-aircraft,” the spokesperson said. “A US team is expected to visit India shortly to hold discussion.”
This is in keeping with Rice having said while in New Delhi that US wishes to be a reliable defense partner with India.
Welcoming the US proposal to set up a joint working group on space cooperation between India and US, Sarna said: “This is a positive development and opens up a new and promising area for high technology cooperation.”
Regarding the Indo-US strategic dialogue, Sarna said: “The US initiative to upgrade and broaden this dialogue giving it a much more global character reflects the further strengthening of the Indo-US strategic partnership.”
The US official noted that South Asia was critical, with China on one side, Iran and the Middle East on the other, and a somewhat turbulent Central Asian region to the north.
The US proposal culminates efforts to repair relations strained by India’s May 1998 nuclear tests.
The healing process began when Bill Clinton visited India in March 2000 near the end of his presidency, as the first president to go there since Jimmy Carter in 1978. He eased sanctions on purchases of high-tech equipment and broke into a market formerly served by India’s Cold War ally Russia.
President George W. Bush’s administration, under a so-called “Next Steps in Strategic Partnership,” pushed that process forward by completely lifting sanctions, including military sales, in return for India’s support on the US-led war on terrorism.
“This year the administration made a judgment that the ‘Next Steps in Strategic Partnership,’ though very important, wasn’t broad enough to really encompass the kind of things we needed to do to take this relationship where it needed to go, and so the president and the secretary (Rice) developed the outline for a decisively broader strategic relationship,” the US official said.
Bush was inviting Manmohan to visit him in July in Washington and the US leader would also like to travel to South Asia later this year or early next year, he said.
Those presidential meetings, he added, would “be consolidating an enhanced dialogue” on the strategic, energy and economic tracks with India.
The strategic dialogue will include global issues, regional security matters, Indian defense requirements, expanding high-tech cooperation and even working toward US-India defense coproduction, the official explained.
Deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said US corporations were now “free to talk to India” about whatever aircraft they could offer.
“It’ll be up to India to decide what it wants. And then negotiations, if it does decide it wants something from us, based on its needs, would proceed from there,” Ereli said.
Beyond possible sale of fighter planes, the US is ready to discuss the more fundamental issue of defense transformation with India, including transformative systems in areas such as command and control, early warning and missile defense, the official said.
“Some of these items may not be as glamorous as combat aircraft, but I think for those of you who follow defense issues you’ll appreciate the significance,” he said.
The energy dialogue is to include civil, nuclear and nuclear safety issues as well as the issue of space launch vehicles and satellites while the existing economic dialogue would be revitalized with discussion of energy, trade, commerce, environment and finance.
US energy, treasury and transport ministers are to visit India this year.
Meanwhile, Indian Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee yesterday welcomed the offer by the United States to boost missile defense and other security initiatives including the proposed sale of military equipment.
“Naturally, we will discuss them (the proposals) and if military aircraft and other weapons, needed for our national interest, are available from the US, we will certainly consider them,” he was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India in Calcutta.
Mukherjee noted “cooperation in economic and other areas between US and India has increased manifold, but there is so far no defense agreement between the two countries.”
India was a Cold War ally of the Soviet Union and maintains close ties with Iran, which the United States accuses of developing nuclear weapons and supporting Middle Eastern extremist groups.
Traditionally, it has bought the majority of its military equipment from Russia, France and Britain, but of late has evinced interest in the military hardware of US defence firms.
The United States and India signed a landmark agreement last January to share advanced technology, including in peaceful nuclear applications.
— With input from agencies
