Clinton lauds India, calls for nuclear restraint

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI, MARCH 22. The United States President, Mr. Bill Clinton, today went all out to win over the elected representatives of the Indian people, lavishing praise on India and its achievements, emphasising the important political and social lessons it offered the world. But he also did some tough talking, making a powerful, even emotional, plea for nuclear restraint and the resumption of a Indo-Pak dialogue to settle the dispute over Kashmir.

``For the sake of innocents who always suffer the most, someone must end the contest of inflicting and absorbing pain,'' he gently emphasised. ``You don't make peace with your friends,'' he said, quoting the late Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. ``Engagement with adversaries is not the same thing as endorsement.''

His message was: time to leave behind old suspicions and take fresh initiatives. While Mr. Clinton made it clear that he had not come to South Asia ``to mediate the dispute over Kashmir,'' he did not hesitate to point out ``if outsiders cannot resolve this problem'' the two countries should ``create the opportunity'' to do it themselves, ``calling on the support of others who can help where possible.''

He did make the point, not so subtly, that, after all, American diplomacy had recently been successful in ``urging the Pakistanis to retreat behind the Line of Control in the Kargil crisis.'' It was almost as if the American President, was reminding India that ``helping'' need not be seen as ``mediation'' and this need not always be a dirty word.

His 35-minute speech in the Central Hall of Parliament today was marked by a standing ovation and punctuated by the thumping of desks in thunderous applause.

The entire range of issues was covered - he believed that both India and the U.S. should join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, that the dialogue on nuclear issues must go on towards resolving of differences, that in the economic and other spheres a working partnership must be established.

Above all, he sought to dispel Indian suspicion built over decades of the Cold War that the U.S. was not interested in seeing the emergence of a strong and secure India. ``America very much wants you to succeed,'' he said.

Lavish in his praise, Mr. Clinton expressed gratitude to Mahatma Gandhi for his life, work and thought, ``without which the great civil rights revolution in the U.S. would never have succeeded on a peaceful plane.''

Praise for Kerala

He extolled the Kerala model of women's empowerment, and enumerated the many lessons the world had learnt from India, especially the important one of keeping together in peace people of different ethnicity and faiths. He saw India as a kaleidoscope of competing images - atomic weapons with `ahimsa', poverty with a large middle class, there were communal tensions and yet India was the most successful melting pot in history.

When it all ended, MPs created a near chaotic situation, literally scrambling to reach out and shake hands with him, and he obliged, mixing with the ``backbenchers'' disarmingly.

He listed four challenges before India and the U.S. that would define the partnership in the years ahead - the need to get the economic relationship right, to sustain global economic growth while lifting the lives of the rich and poor alike, to achieve growth in the information age while protecting the environment and reversing global climate change, and finally the need to protect the gains of democracy.

The Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, responded by talking about India and the U.S. as ``natural allies'' and quoted American poet Walt Whitman, ``Sail forth - steer for the deep water only ... For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go.''

Earlier, Mr. Krishan Kant, Vice-President and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, welcomed Mr. Clinton and his delegation, and the event was wound up by the Speaker, Mr. G. M. C, Balayogi, who said the American President's address would mark a ``significant milestone'' in the history of Indo-U.S. relations.

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