By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Jul 23 2001 (IPS)

The chief of the United States’ policy on South Asia began talks with top Indian leaders here Monday, raising chances of the early removal of Washington’s economic sanctions against this country and of new strategic alignments in the region.

Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca was scheduled to meet Jaswant Singh, who holds the key defence and external affairs portfolios in the ultra-right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Rocca State was also slated to meet opposition leader Sonia Gandhi, whose Congress party has expressed keenness in improved Indo-U.S. ties.

Rocca’s visit closely follows one last week by U.S. armed forces chief Gen Henry Shelton, who expressed the hope of a new military relationship emerging between Washington and New Delhi.

“India is a major power with global influence and I hope we can establish a strong military-to-military relationship,” Shelton said as he began a three-day tour last Wednesday.

Shelton indicated that the United States was preparing to dismantle sanctions imposed on India after the Vajpayee regime set off a series of defence-related nuclear tests in May 1998 while continuing to defy the Comprehensvie Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

“The sanctions are being reviewed and a decision will be made in a while,” Shelton told reporters.

India, which consistently opposed U.S. policy throughout the Cold War period and was closely aligned with the former Soviet Union, made a complete about-turn after the BJP first came to power after defeating the Congress party in 1998.

When U.S. President George W Bush proposed the National Missile Defence (NMD) plan for a missile shield in his May 1 address, India wasted no time in endorsing it as “highly significant and far- reaching”.

During the Cold-War years, the United States was militarily close to Pakistan, with which South Asian neighbour India has fought three wars over the possession of Kashmir.

Attempts to resolve the Kashmir issue failed at a high-voltage, three-day summit between Vajpayee and Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf last week in the north Indian city of Agra.

The United States, which has shown keen interest in resolving the feud between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, has since offered to help along any dialogue.

Rocca’s discussions here were expected to cover the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir, which is now running for 54 years but showing no signs of a quick resolution.

She is expected fly to the Nepali capital of Kathmandu on Tuesday before moving on to Pakistan on Friday.

As Indo-U.S. relations improve, there appears to be a corresponding decline in the equation between Islamabad and Washington, especially after Pakistan came under military rule in October 1999.

However before she set out on her South Asia tour, Rocca made it clear that “relations with one country would not be at the expense of another one”.

On the other hand, Washington has made known its annoyance with Pakistan for not using its influence with the Taliban, which runs Afghanistan, to hand over the fugitive Osama Bin Laden.

India now sees itself as having common cause with Washington in containing ‘jehadist’ militancy which it says has spilled into disputed Kashmir, encouraged and supported by Pakistan.

A shift in Indo-U.S. relations was first discernible during a South Asia tour by President Bill Clinton in March, when he spent five days in India and visited several cities but spent only a few hours in Islamabad.

Clinton had then described India as a “natural ally” — a term that was repeated by Gen Shelton during his visit to India last week.

An important outcome of Shelton’s visit was an agreement to revive the Defence Planning Group (DPG) between the first two countries, which has remained inactive since 1996 when a communist-backed United Front came to power.

The 1998 nuclear tests carried out by the nationalist and right-wing BJP government, instantly responded to by Pakistan through a rival series of tests, drew Washington’s displeasure in the shape of economic sanctions against India.

But it soon became apparent that the sanctions had little effect on India’s self-sustaining economy though it is in the middle of ambitious reforms, characterised by the opening up of its vast untapped markets.

Experts said the DPG, which covers military operations, is to be led by top defence officials on both sides. It is expected to be in place by the year-end — by which time, officials say, the sanctions would have become history.

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