Clinton keen on bridging the `distance' with India

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, FEB. 2. The U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton, has said that his visit to India next month should be seen, among other things, as an effort to ``engage'' the world's largest democracy; and that it was unfortunate that the U.S. has had a ``distant'' relationship with India for too long. Mr. Clinton was responding to questions after a meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House.

Asked what was it that India had done to convince him to travel there despite the lack of progress on the non- proliferation front, he said: ``I'm going because it's the biggest democracy in the world and I think we haven't been working with them enough.

``Just as I believe we have to engage China that has a political system very different from ours, we have to engage India that makes decisions sometimes we don't agree with... but it is a great democracy that has preserved its democracy, I must say, against enormous odds. And we have an enormous common interest in shaping the future with them, and I'm looking forward to it.''.

He added: ``I think it's unfortunate that the U.S. has been estranged, or, if not estranged, at least has had a distant relationship with the Indians for too long.''

The White House, on Tuesday, while making the announcement of the presidential visit to South Asia has not gone into the finer details of Mr. Clinton's programme in India and much would depend on the kind of report that the U.S. review team - currently visiting India - makes on its return.

The expectation is that Mr. Clinton would be travelling to Mumbai and Agra; to Bangalore or Hyderabad, besides New Delhi. The official part of the President's programme in New Delhi is likely to be spread over two days.

The White House has not committed itself one way or the other on whether or not Mr. Clinton intends to drop by Pakistan. Officials have been careful in what they have been saying on the visit to Islamabad making the point that no decision has been made on ``other stops''. One view is that Mr. Clinton will still make it to Pakistan either before he starts his official visit to India or after he finishes his state visit to Bangladesh.

No `India tilt'

Meanwhile, a spokesperson of the National Security Council has said that the presidential visit to India has to be placed in the context of the ``very important strategic interests'' of the U.S., but would not go to the extent of terming the upcoming visit either as a ``sea shift'' in American diplomacy or in any kind of ``tilt'' towards India.

``We have very important strategic interests with India - health, environment, trade and investment, certainly security and terrorism - and this is a very important relationship for the U.S. The President has wanted to travel there, to engage the Indian leadership on this broad array of issues and felt that given where we are in the state of the relationship... we should travel, we should communicate with the Indian Government about issues that we agree and the issues we disagree,'' Mr. David Leavy said.

On whether the administration was trying to promote a strategic alliance with India and the extent to which Washington was prepared to go in the betterment of relations with India, the NSC spokesperson said the President viewed strong relations with India ``as essential to our own interests, the interests of the American people''.

``We do have a relationship that stands alone... we've never put our relationship with India based on relationships with other countries; it stands alone. It's an important country. We need to engage them, we have a broad agenda and that's what we hope to accomplish,'' Mr. Leavy said.

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