India hopes U.S. will lift sanctions soon

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI, DEC. 15. With the U.S. president-elect, Mr. George W. Bush, getting ready to take charge of American foreign policy next month, the question of India joining signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty may no longer dominate Indo-U.S. relations, diplomatic observers here suggest.

As the CTBT begins to lose some of its recent weight in American arms control priorities as well as the extraordinary salience in Indo-U.S. relations, there is some hope here that the prospective Bush administration will move quickly to lift all the sanctions that were imposed by the U.S. after India's nuclear tests in May 1998.

The proclaimed opposition of Mr. Bush and the Republican party to the CTBT, and its preoccupation with the question of building a controversial defence system against missiles are likely to make the treaty a ``tertiary issue'' for the new administration, the sources add.

The American focus under Mr. Bush is expected to be on acceleration of the programmes to build national and theatre missile defence systems. This would involve a renegotiation of the arms control equations between U.S. and the Russian federation as well as the management of nuclear tensions between Washington and Beijing.

The CTBT was at the top of the President, Mr. Bill Clinton's arms control agenda and dogged Indo-U.S. ties throughout the 1990s. Since India's nuclear tests, Mr. Clinton has made India's signature on the treaty a key benchmark for the improvement of bilateral relations.

The Clinton administration has insisted that Indo-U.S. relations will not realise their ``full potential'' until India meets the non-proliferation criteria, in particular, the CTBT.

While opposing the CTBT, the Bush team hopes India will continue with its unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. In many of its recent statements, the Indian Government has affirmed its commitment to the moratorium and indicated that it was not time- bound.

Although Mr. Clinton has removed or relaxed some of the sanctions imposed on India, many relating to lending by international financial institutions, military cooperation and high-technology transfers remain.

The U.S. Congress had given Mr. Clinton the authority to remove the sanctions at his political discretion. But the administration had sought to use sanctions law to leverage India's signature on the CTBT.

An early decision by the Bush team on lifting the sanctions should wipe the slate clean and create the right atmosphere to boost Indo-U.S. relations. Mr. Bush has promised a more substantive engagement between the two countries and deal with India as an emerging power.

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