Beyond a saga of U.S. sanctions

INDIA AND PAKISTAN have rightly welcomed the latest U.S. decision to lift the similar sanctions it imposed on both of them in the context of their competitive nuclear weapons testing in 1998. This category of sanctions, under the Glenn Amendment of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, had certainly hurt Pakistan much more than India. The differential economic strengths of India and Pakistan as also their asymmetrical ties with the United States largely accounted for that reality. Yet, it is the timing of the latest American move that appears to have induced official India to be less enthusiastic than Pakistan. Now, Islamabad too is keen that many of its other concerns be addressed by the U.S. But Pakistan's President and Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, seems eager to sustain the strategic understanding which he struck with the U.S. only a few days ago to join its avowed new fight against globalised terrorism. Such a significant updating of an old and chequered U.S.-Pakistan alliance has already dealt a seismic blow to Islamabad's original links with the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. Yet, a relevant pointer is that Washington is cognisant of Islamabad's perceived ability to help solve the basic riddle of the Taliban, which is still reckoned to harbour Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect behind the terrorist carnage that rocked America on September 11. Nonetheless, these geopolitical dynamics appear to have come as a rude shock to official India. However, New Delhi can trim its sails to the new strategic winds blowing across the world and not just in South Asia.

There is more to the timing of the latest U.S. move on sanctions than just its renewed bonhomie with Islamabad. The U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, is reported to have asked the Congress to empower him to waive in his discretion all the existing sanctions on America's military assistance and weapons exports in respect of any country for a period of five years from now. Mr. Bush wants to globalise the reach of his stated anti- terror campaign through this measure of probable interest to some of Washington's critics on the international stage at this juncture. Given also Mr. Bush's mood of this nature, the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, and his advisers will do well to move on by making the most of the latest development. At one stage prior to the terrorist outrage of September 11, it surely looked as if the U.S. might lift the India-oriented sanctions before pleasing Pakistan likewise. The reasoning had to do with Washington's known compulsions to remove some unseemly vestiges of an otherwise diminishing estrangement with democratic India. A truism, valid then and more so in today's surcharged international environment, is that a stable Pakistan is in India's intrinsic interest. The latest removal of most U.S. sanctions can contribute to Pakistan's stability. A heartening episode prior to the new turn in the sanctions saga was that the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, assured his Pakistani counterpart, Mr. Abdul Sattar, that India would not seek to complicate Islamabad's present troubles.

For India, a sanctions-free economic relationship with the U.S. can be quite rewarding mutually and in the multilateral domain. India can expect a beneficial spin-off effect, inclusive of access to the American dual-use knowhow, in the military and scientific sectors too. Yet, given some unclear signals from Washington about its pre-1998 embargo, the fine print of Mr. Bush's orders will need to be combed carefully. In the case of Pakistan, Mr. Bush has consciously kept in place the sanctions that were clamped in 1999 under the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act on account of that country's deviation from a democratic dispensation. Yet, the prospects for Pakistan cannot be exaggerated, more so if a range of sanctions traceable from the Symington Amendment of 1978 is indeed removed.

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Section  : Opinion
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