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Indo-US talks have reached 'a lot of common ground': Naresh Chandra

C K Arora in Washington

Contrary to the general impression, the United States and India have reached ''a lot of common ground,'' in sensitive areas -- like export-controls, reduction of nuclear weapons and checks on the production of fissile material - raising hopes of success for their non-proliferation dialogue which began in June last.

India's Ambassador to the US Naresh Chandra who, along with Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Jaswant Singh, had been participating in the talks with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, tried to put the five-month-long efforts in perspective at a luncheon meeting with the Indian media yesterday.

He said the two sides were able to identify areas of ''satisfactory progress'' at the seventh round of their on-going discussion in Rome last week. In other areas, the talks continued with the avowed objective of achieving ''greater congruency,'' he added.

When asked about the US insistence on India ordering a unilateral moratorium on the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, pending the finalisation of a treaty on the subject, the Indian ambassador preferred to draw attention to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's speech on the subject at the United Nations' General Assembly on September 24 last.

Vajpayee had said, ''India will pay serious attention to any other multi-lateral initiatives in this area, during the course of the negotiations (on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty) in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.''

Naresh Chandra said India had agreed to participate in the negotiations on the proposed treaty in the CD. If the CD agreed to anything ahead of the treaty, ''we will consider that interim arrangement''.

He said the next round -- eighth in the series of the US-India Talks -- would place in January in New Delhi. It would allow time to both sides to formulate their positions on various other issues on which they differ, he added.

In this context, both sides took note of the establishment of the National Security Council in India. It would discuss issues like the deployment weapons and missiles. ''We can now expect a more clear-cut enunciation of India's security doctrine and strategy,'' he added.

Meanwhile, Talbott's speech on ''US diplomacy in South Asia: a progress report'', at the Brookings Institution, a Washington- based think tank, on November 12 last, has led to the impression that there has been a perceptible toughening in the Clinton administration's stance vis-a-vis India.

The deputy secretary had said, ''We do not, and will not, concede, even by implication, that India and Pakistan have established themselves as nuclear-weapons states under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.'' He asked them to sign the pact before expecting release of American high-technology.

The subsequent release of a list by the US commerce department virtually blacklisting some 200 government and private entities further strengthened this impression.

Naresh Chandra did not fully share this view. He said Talbott, who was making the speech as a deputy secretary of state and not as a negotiator, had no choice but to include the whole gamut of the government's policies in his speech. Any thing left out of it would have been seen as ''significant omission,'' he added.

Moreover, he said that Talbott himself had maintained that it was a long-term US goal to bring India and Pakistan into the NPT. ''It may be mentioned that nobody is basing his negotiating position on the NPT or changing its position because of this treaty,'' he added.

The Indian ambassador, however, took the entities list seriously. It figured at the Rome talks as well. ''Our initial scrutiny shows that the list is unduly large containing certain institutions, like the Indian Institute of Technology, which should not have been there,'' he added.

He said, ''India would take up the matter with the US on a urgent basis. Moreover, the affected entities had 60 days time to make representation, asking for modification or exclusion from the list, as the case might be. This matter was currently under examination following which New Delhi might consider the possibility of approaching the World Trade Organisation, he added.

He also took exception to the US decision, denying World Bank loans to India for non-humanitarian projects. He said it was in violation of the multi-lateral lending agency's charter which disallows politics in its decision- making process. Its decisions had to be governed strictly by economic consideration.

He said the US was allowing private banks, which charge higher interest, to lend to Indian government entities and private companies in India. Then, what was the rationale in keeping out the World Bank and other such lending agencies through sanctions, imposed after India's May nuclear tests

India gets around three billion as project loans from the World Bank annually. Last year, its projects involving about one billion dollars were not considered in view of the US sanctions.

UNI

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