DISARMAMENT-US: Clinton Slaps Sweeping Sanctions on India

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, May 13 1998 (IPS) - US President Bill Clinton, reacting to two more nuclear tests by India Wednesday, slapped sweeping sanctions on New Delhi.

The sanctions will have a “profound effect” on ties between the world’s two most populous democracies, according to the State Department. Virtually overnight, India effectively will find itself in a group of “rogue states” including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Cuba, and Burma.

In addition, Washington dispatched two top envoys – including its military Central Command (Centcom) chief – to dissuade Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from conducting tests in response to the five devices India has exploded since early Monday.

US intelligence agencies, faulted for failing to detect preparations for the Indian tests, have reported increased activity at suspected Pakistani testing sites this week, according to officials here.

Administration officials and lawmakers warned in statements made throughout Wednesday that a Pakistani test would not only trigger sweeping sanctions against Islamabad but also risked setting off a “chain reaction” among other near-nuclear states to accelerate their programmes.

“Other countries will try to follow suit, unless we’re able to intervene politically and persuade them that they should not do so,” said Defence Secretary William Cohen. Pakistan had much to gain by exercising restraint, he suggested. Islamabad has had somewhat strained relations with Washington since former President George Bush suspended aid and arms sales over its nuclear programme.

The administration also told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the Indian tests make it even more urgent to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which is currently pending before the US Senate.

But top Republican senators, including Majority Leader Trent Lott and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, said the CTBT should be shelved. “India’s actions demonstrate that the treaty, from a non-proliferation standpoint, is scarcely more than a sham,” Helms said Wednesday.

“As long as there is breath in me, I will never support the lifting of the…sanctions on India unless they abandon all nuclear ambitions,” he declared.

Two days after India announced its tests, that threat of a major break in the bilateral relationship looks quite real. Asked how long the sanctions might last, Clinton said he had “no discretion” to waive or modify any of the sanctions required under the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act, which applies to non-declared nuclear states which explode a nuclear device.

“In order to lift the sanctions, as I read the law, Congress would have to vote to do it,” the US leader said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Potsdam, Germany.

Sanctions include terminating all but humanitarian aid; banning arms sales and military financing; canceling and denying all bilateral investment and export credits or guarantees; and banning all exports, such as supercomputers, which could have a military or nuclear use.

Under the Act, Washington also must oppose all loans to India by international financial institutions. These include the World Bank, New Delhi’s largest source of development capital, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

If Washington succeeds in rallying other industrialised countries behind it, the impact of the latter sanctions could be quite dramatic in what remains one of the poorest countries in the world.

While India has not borrowed from the IMF since 1993, it received more than 1.5 billion dollars from the Bank and its soft- loan affiliate, the International Development Association (IDA), just last year.

Later this month, the Bank’s executive board was scheduled to approve another 567 million dollars in new loans whose fate has now been placed in doubt. The Bank currently has more than 15 billion dollars in active loans in India, its biggest customer.

To make its opposition to those loans effective, Washington needs the support of just a few other industrialised countries. Japan, India’s largest bilateral donor, announced it was considering suspending its aid programme. Kohl said Wednesday that Germany intends to “take a very close look at the sanctions. There’s no doubt whatsoever that the Federal government…will make it very clear that this was the wrong decision for (India) to take, that we do not accept that decision, and that we do not see any reason that would justify (it).”

Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, told reporters in Germany late Wednesday he hoped other countries – including participants in this week’s summit in Britain of the ‘Group of Eight’ (G-8) political powers – would take “concrete and tangible action…to make it very clear that the era of nuclear testing is ending and India is…swimming against the tide.”

Even if Washington acts alone, the effects could be far- reaching, if only because US investment and trade with India have mushroomed in the eight years since New Delhi launched a broad range of economic reforms. Many US companies which have invested or exported to India rely on US government loans and guarantees which will now be denied them.

Berger said almost 500 million dollars in pending military sales will be canceled, as well as some four billion dollars in pending Export-Import Bank guarantees and 10.2 billion dollars in insurance and finance from the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Clinton, in his remarks in Germany, suggested that the Indian tests resulted from the country feeling “under-appreciated in the world.”

“But to think that you have to manifest your greatness by behaviour that recalls the very worst events of the 20th century …is just wrong,” he said. “They made a terrible mistake.”