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Wisner praises Vajpayee, calls for Indo-US talks

Former US ambassador to India Frank G Wisner has called for a dialogue between the United States and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government on the nuclear issue.

This, he said, would continue to be a focus of interest and concern for policy-makers around the world.

Replying to questions after his speech on the political situation in India in Washington, he drew comfort at the restraint shown by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In one of his latest statements, Vajpayee merely spoke of his government taking a fresh look at the sensitive issue. The new prime minister did not say that he would rush to exercise the nuclear option, he explained.

Conscious of the fact that non-proliferation has been a major thrust of the Bill Clinton administration's foreign policy and also a sore point in the otherwise improving Indo-US relations, Wisner said the subject 'should be left to our governments to be discussed in private'.

In the run-up of US President Bill Clinton's visit to India this year-end, he said the two governments had to compare notes on the issue to avoid surprises. He favoured dialogue and discretion in dealing with the problem of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems.

Referring to India's refusal to sign the Comprehensive (Nuclear) Test Ban Treaty, he said the two governments have to address the issue.

India did so in protest against the non-inclusion of its demand for a time-frame within which the declared nuclear powers -- the US, Russia, Britain, France and China -- would eliminate their stockpiles of the weapons of mass destruction.

Wisner was happy that the Vajpayee government proposed to set up a national security council which would offer a forum to discuss such issues.

Wisner, who had several rounds of discussions with top BJP leaders, including Vajpayee, during his stay in India between 1994 and 1997, sought to remove the general impression in the US that the BJP was anti-Pakistan or against the United States. Nor was it opposed to the country's seven-year-old economic reforms despite its 'swadeshi' protestations.

He disagreed with the BJP's description in the US media as a Hindu nationalist party, arguing that he would prefer to call it just a nationalist party. ''I believe that the BJP is a democratic party,'' he said. ''It will protect and preserve democracy in India.''

He was confident that Vajpayee would carry forward the policy of normalisation of relations with India's neighbours, particularly Pakistan, known as the Gujral doctrine -- the genesis of which could be traced to the 1977 Janata ministry, in which Vajpayee was the external affairs minister.

Wisner was impressed by Vajpayee's gesture to attend ther India-Pakistan hockey match. The prime minister would do everything to improve relations with Pakistan, he said. But for the negotiations, there had to be reciprocity unlike the unilateralism of the initial stages, he added.

He did not want to hazard any guess about the life of the Vajpayee ministry. However, he referred to certain factors which would help it to stay in office. These included the people's desire for a stable policy and inability of political parties to face elections so frequently.

UNI

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