Bilateral thrust

Published : Apr 01, 2000 00:00 IST

The media hype of a "historic shift" in the U.S. stand on Kashmir appears to be without basis; in fact, there is no evidence of the Clinton Administration having softened its position on any important issue.

THE crowds may have been missing, but from the Vajpayee Government's point of view President Bill Clinton's visit was a roaring success. Both U.S. and Indian officials stuck to the agreed script. No contentious issues were articulated openly. Although th ere were initial objections to Clinton including Pakistan in his tour schedule, it became clear by the end of February that there was no question of Clinton bypassing Islamabad. The U.S. Administration was not amused by India's attempts to dictate the Pr esident's itinerary. The reluctance of the White House to announce the schedule of Clinton's visit to Islamabad was dictated more by personal security considerations than by any reluctance to go to Pakistan. A slight but perceptible U.S. tilt towards New Delhi has been visible since last year, but Washington obviously felt that sidestepping Islamabad would have sent the wrong message.

The Indian government has reasons to be pleased that the U.S. President has chosen to make a high-profile visit to India in less than two years after its nuclear weapon tests. Although the Clinton administration has warmed up to the National Democratic A lliance (NDA) Government, it is discreetly keeping up its pressure on New Delhi on the nuclear proliferation issue. In the Vision Statement signed by Clinton and Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, both countries pledged to forgo further nuclear tests, coopera te on a treaty to end the production of fissile materials, and control the export of nuclear technology. Clinton has invited Vajpayee to visit Washington in September. The Americans have privately expressed the hope that India would have appended its sig nature to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by then.

During his visit, Clinton gave the impression of treating India as a rising regional military and economic superpower. The nuclear explosions and the Bharatiya Janata Party's communal and xenophobic politics were treated as not being important issues any more. A leading Western newspaper wrote recently that the NDA Government had been friendlier to business and more hostile to Communism than the Congress(I) governments. One of the agreements reached during the Clinton visit was to set up an Asian Centre for Democratic Governance in Delhi. "I know it is difficult to be a democracy bordered by nations which reject democracy," Clinton said in his address to Indian parliamentarians.

India has also accepted an invitation to attend the "Summit of Democracies" to be held in Warsaw in May. The states that are likely to be represented in Warsaw include Hungary, Poland and others that have forsaken socialism, opted for the free market and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The U.S. was never keen about democracies in the 20th century. Its new-found love for democracy is intended to revive yet another Cold War concept in order to isolate countries such as China. Many pe ople in India feel that the Vajpayee Government's hasty acceptance of the invitation goes against the principles of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). But the ideologues of the BJP have from the outset given the impression that NAM has outlived its utility.

Interestingly, when French Foreign Minister Hubart Vedrine was in New Delhi in February, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh waxed eloquent about the urgent need for multi-polarity in international politics. Both the French and the Indian side were c ritical of U.S. unilateralism in world affairs. When Clinton was in Delhi, only President K.R. Narayanan echoed the Nehruvian foreign policy ideals. The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the Foreign Office took umbrage at the President's reiteration of t he time-honoured foreign policy position.

THE Vajpayee Govern-ment has shown a marked inclination to be part of the U.S. strategic designs for the region and the world. It refused to condemn the U.S. missile attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan and extended only lukewarm support to the government an d people of Yugoslavia when they were subjected to a three-month-long war by the U.S.-led NATO. The Indian Government has not taken any significant initiative to see that the decade-long sanctions imposed on that country are lifted. The U.S. military act ion in Kosovo has been used to justify the so-called "humanitarian interventions", even without a mandate from the United Nations Security Council. Last June, speaking to U.S. forces in Macedonia, Clinton said: "Whether you live in Africa or Central Euro pe or any other place, if somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background, or their religion, and it is within our power to stop it, we will stop it." Today it is Kosovo, tomorrow it could well be Kashmir. Unfortunately, even the main Opposition party, the Congress(I), preferred to play the role of a 'B' team to the NDA Government and had scarcely anything critical to say about the United States' long-term agenda for the region.

It was clear during the course of the Clinton visit that the full-blooded security relations the present Government wants between the two countries would be possible only after India signed the CTBT and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Vajpaye e had said in an interview to an American magazine a week before Clinton arrived that the U.S. did not agree with India's security concerns. There was no evidence to show that the Clinton Administration had softened its position on important issues. In h is address to Indian parliamentarians at the Central Hall of Parliament, Clinton called on India to sign the CTBT and resume its dialogue with Pakistan. He also reminded them of the role U.S. diplomacy played during the war in Kargil. He said that he was not in the subcontinent to "mediate" on Kashmir. However, in his State of the Union address in the U.S., he had said that the "U.S. should be a peacemaker, wherever we can." Political observers are of the view that the U.S. is already playing a role in the Kashmir dispute, as it was arm-twisting of the Pakistani civilian government by the U.S. that hastened the Pakistani troop withdrawal from Kargil. For the first time in the history of Indo-U.S. relations, the U.S. gave up the doctrine of equal culpab ility and rebuked Pakistan publicly for crossing the Line of Control (LoC). The Joint Statement issued by Clinton and former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Washington after the war ended in Kargil contained a commitment by Clinton that he would take a "personal interest" in helping India and Pakistan resolve the Kashmir problem.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright repeatedly told presspersons accompanying Clinton on his trip to South Asia that the U.S' Kashmir policy remained "unchanged". The media hype of a "historic shift" in the U.S. stand on Kashmir appears to be with out any basis. A stray remark by Clinton in a television interview - in which he said that he believed that "there are elements within the Pakistani Government that have supported those who engaged in violence in Kashmir" - is the only evidence provided to support the claim. While in India, Clinton specifically declined to back New Delhi's claim that the massacre of 35 Sikhs in Kashmir was the handiwork of Pakistan-backed militants.

India has also been trying privately to sell the idea to Washington that the LoC should be converted into a permanent border. Clinton only stuck to the U.S. position that the sanctity of the LoC should be respected. New Delhi has interpreted this positio n as an endorsement of its demand that Pakistan should stop cross-border terrorism. Islamabad, on the other hand, sees this statement as a guarantee that Indian troops will not be allowed to cross the LoC to retaliate against Pakistan-sponsored terrorist activities.

Pakistan has been one of the most reliable allies of the U.S. in the region, and Washington will continue to have strategic ties with Islamabad in the foreseeable future. Joint exercises by U.S. and Pakistani forces have been a regular feature since the 1950s when anti-Communist military alliances such as the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) came into being. The U.S. missiles aimed at Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden's camp in Jalalabad in Afghanistan flew over Pakistani territory with the tacit approv al of the Pakistani Government.

The Vajpayee Government is not averse to close military cooperation with the Americans. Military cooperation between the two countries started in January 1995 during the visit of the then U.S. Secretary of State William Perry, when an Indo-U.S. military cooperation treaty was signed. Joint exercises between the armies and the navies of the two countries started in a big way in the mid-1990s. Since the nuclear tests of 1998, these exercises have been put on hold. But there are signs that the exercises ar e all set to restart. The French Navy was engaged in a high-profile joint exercise with the Indian Navy in February and March.

AS things stand, the U.S. military invites India to participate in 15 to 18 conferences a year. The U.S. President has the authority to waive sanctions if it is in the interests of national security. In this context, the International Military and Educat ion Training (IMET) has been waived and India has been allotted $450,000. Chief of the Army Staff Gen. V.P. Malik visited Washington in October 1999, while Admiral Dennis Blair, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, visited India in January thi s year.

An important agreement on "institutional dialogue" between the two countries was signed during Clinton's visit. According to Indian officials, a "dialogue architecture" will now be in place. The Indian Foreign Minister and the U.S. Secretary of State wil l henceforth meet every year. In Asia, only the Chinese and the Japanese governments have been accorded this "privilege" by the U.S. Government. Both countries will further intensify their cooperation on combating "terrorism" by having regular "dialogues " and "forums".

The Indian Government has already given permission to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to open an office in New Delhi. The first FBI office to be opened abroad was in Hungary in late February: there the FBI has been granted the right to gat her intelligence freely and make arrests. Usually, the FBI has its agents placed as "legal attaches" in its embassies. It is not known whether India will follow the Hungarian precedent. An Indian employee of the U.S. Embassy in Delhi was arrested earlier in the year after being lured into the U.S. in a "sting" operation and sentenced to a long jail term on charges of accepting bribes from Indian visa-seekers. The Indian Government has lodged a very mild complaint with the U.S. authorities. Indo-U.S. coo peration in tackling terrorism and crime seems to have started in earnest.

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