U.S., India to work for closer military ties

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, MAY 3. The restoration of military-to-military relations between the United States and India with the visit to New Delhi this month by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry Shelton, is seen in political circles as a very significant development taking place after a three-year lull.

In an interview with The Washington Times, Mr. Lalit Mansingh, India's Ambassador to the U.S., said that during the visit, which follows that of the Minister for External Affairs and Defence, Mr. Jaswant Singh, here, Gen. Shelton would work on a ``closer relationship'' between the two military forces.

Meanwhile, agency reports said the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Mr. Paul O'Neill, assured the Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Sinha - who was here for the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - that the U.S. would soon lift the economic sanctions imposed after the 1998 Pokhran tests.

Mr. Mansingh said that if the sanctions were brought to a close on military and scientific cooperation, India hoped to work on nuclear power with U.S. companies to provide energy without using coal.

And on the military side, he said New Delhi was interested in developing service-to-service relations, cooperation on military doctrine and training and co-production and sale of weapons. On previous occasions, India had been denied the right to purchase Harpoon anti-ship missiles and gun-locating radars.

``The (nuclear) genie can't be put back in the bottle. We have to get beyond and look at common strategic interests,'' Mr. Mansingh told the paper, but ``refused to say'' the growing cooperation between the U.S. and India was aimed at China.

The expanding cooperation between the two countries has been looked at from at least two different perspectives. On the one hand, some diplomats and scholars speak of the growing interactions of the two countries as a serious indication of taking the bilateral relationship to a plane never witnessed before; and one that would have its impact on regional and global matters.

It is in this context that many are seeing the visit of the Deputy Secretary of State, Mr. Richard Armitage, to New Delhi to ``consult'' Indian leaders on the U.S. President's new strategic initiatives including the national missile shield proposal. Senior diplomats say India is being taken very seriously in political and economic fora by the U.S. and others.

The flip side to this growing cooperation between Washington and New Delhi is the apprehension in some circles that perhaps the Bush administration is looking for a ``comfort zone'' with India vis-a-vis its dealings with China - a view disputed in official quarters of the two countries and for obvious reasons.

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Section  : International
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