Diplomacy: Indo-US Ties; 2 Steps Forward 1 Step Back

Diplomacy

India Today
October 19,1998

INDO-US TIES
2 Steps Forward 1 Step Back

Despite the apparent bonhomie surrounding talks on the nuclear issue the two sides are far from any agreement.

By Manoj Joshi

This week Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will send a considered reply to a missive he received from President Bill Clinton in early October. It will mark a review of the intense dialogue India and the US have undertaken since the Pokhran II tests and set the stage for the next round of talks between the prime minister's special envoy Jaswant Singh and US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott slated for October 26.

Clinton's letter welcomed Vajpayee's September 24 declaration at the UN that India would not stand in the way of the CTBT coming into force by September 1999. But it also spelt out a number of additional steps the US wants India to take, ranging from a unilateral moratorium on the production of fissile material to the creation of a "restraint regime". Indian officials expect the prime minister's reply will outline India's expectations from the US in equally forthright terms.

There have been five rounds of talks between Singh and Talbott. Last week, Vajpayee's Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra took time off from his private visit to the US to meet Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Karl Inderfurth. Coincidentally Singh, who was holidaying in the UK, held talks with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in London. But neither South Block nor the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) are willing to provide any details.

Critics say both sides are far from any agreement. So the postponement of Clinton's visit to India was a foregone conclusion. "There was an obvious implausibility in expecting the American President to visit India with US punitive sanctions still in place," says a senior official in the PMO.

Vajpayee has laid out the strategic elements of the dialogue bluntly in his acclaimed address to the Asia Society in New York. India and the US, he said, could become "natural allies" but only in a restructured framework of relations. The US, he said, was unwilling to "accept us as a responsible member of the international community". Also, India's signing of the CTBT and the US lifting sanctions were not issues of negotiations. There are wider concerns relating to India's security interests and need for technology transfer.

The early rounds of the Singh-Talbott talks in June and July generated considerable enthusiasm and there were expectations that India would commit itself to CTBT soon. In his statements in India and his address to the UN Vajpayee has made it clear that India does not want to block the CTBT, but he has emphasised that the actual signature depends on the outcome of the Indo-US negotiations currently underway.

There is concern among Indian analysts like Brahma Chellaney, professor at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, that the US is now upping the ante. On the day Vajpayee spoke at the UN, hardline US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright outlined four priority areas for the US: the actual signature on the CTBT, immediate cessation of production of fissile material, "structuring a restraint regime on nuclear weapons and their means of delivery" and controls on the export of nuclear material and technology. Indian officials say the US is moving the goalpost since this theme is being re-stated by other US officials like Inderfurth and National Security Adviser Samuel Berger and formed the theme of the Clinton letter. Indian and US officials are now expected to have a round of technical talks to discuss issues such as what the two sides mean by deployment: whether it is keeping warheads and launchers apart or separating the fissile core of atomic weapons from their conventional explosive triggers. This may be dovetailed with the sixth round of discussions being held in Europe instead of Delhi to avoid the glare of publicity and attendant political pressure that talks in India would generate. It is clear both sides are digging in for the long haul.

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