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US denies softening stand on CTBT

US officials have expressed surprise over reports in a section of the Indian media, suggesting that the Clinton administration is willing to lift economic sanctions without India signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or abandoning its proposed missile test.

They dismissed these reports as ''erroneous'', making it clear that there is no change in the United States's policy. These are mandatory sanctions and would be withdrawn only after India had met the non-proliferation concerns outlined by the international community, including the UN Security Council.

The reports, coming days before the 8th round of the US-India non-proliferation dialogue in New Delhi, created a virtual stir in the State Department's South Asia bureau yesterday.

Originally it thought of issuing a ''clarification'' but a meeting of its senior officials decided against such a formal response, fearing that it might only add to the confusion on the eve of Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott's visit to New Delhi.

In fact, the reports are claimed to be based on Talbott's January 16 speech at Stanford University, and US officials maintain that the deputy secretary had not said what had been attributed to him. He had not given any indication of unconditional lifting of sanctions as had been made out in the news reports.

According to the text of the speech, he referred to his trip to India next week for the parallel dialogues the US had been conducting with India and Pakistan in the aftermath of theirnuclear tests.

''Because of those tests, we are confronted with a lamentable but, for the foreseeable future, irreversible fact: India and Pakistan have formally and overtly demonstrated that they have nuclear weapons. In so doing, they made themselves in 1998 even more part of the problem of regional and global proliferation than they were before," Talbott said.

He, however, said, ''They can, in 1999, if they so choose, move back in the direction of being part of the solution -- and they can do that while enhancing their own security at the same time.''

''One way they can move back in the right direction in the political sphere is by intensifying contacts and confidence-building measures, including on the issue of Kashmir,'' Talbott remarked.

He said they could also do so by taking four ''important steps.'' These are: adhering to the CTBT, agreeing to a moratorium on the further production of fissile material, demonstrating prudence and restraint in the development, flight testing and storage of ballistic missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft and strengthening export controls.

''The essence of the argument that we're making to the Indians and Pakistanis is that in pursuing what we believe in their ill-advised reliance on nuclear deterrence, we hope very much they will not jeopardise the other, political and economic dimensions of their own safety,'' he added.

Then, Talbott drew attention to what he called ''quite a few experts and not a few members of congress who believe that we should hold India's and Pakistani's feet to the fire, insisting on adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons state and on a missile flight-test ban before we grant any significant sanctions relief.''

He said, ''We believe following that stern advice would be to make the best enemy of the good but we can't just say, trust us, but don't ask us what is going in this black box. We've got to make the case for what we're up to and why. We must do the same with regard to international public opinion. Particularly in those countries -- like Ukraine, for example, or Brazil or Argentina or South Africa -- that had the option of going nuclear but instead decided, bravely and wisely, to join the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states."

It appears that perhaps these observations of Talbott had been interpreted as the United States's willingness to lift sanctions without insisting on attendant conditions. But here, he was referring to the NPT and not CTBT.

''In our dialogues with India and Pakistan,'' Talbott pointed out, ''We make no claim to having a formal mandate or proxy from any other country or international grouping -- the P-5, the G-8, the South Asia task force. But we do feel a political and moral obligation to make sure that our position and proposals are consistent with the various communiques issued by those bodies last June. And that we keep faith with the world community as a whole,'' he added.

Meanwhile, senior White House aide Bruce Reidel told newspersons yesterday that Talbott would make new suggestions at the nextweek's talks in New Delhi and Islamabad for resolving differences on the nuclear issue with India and Pakistan.

He said the objective is to expand this relationship with South Asia ''to see that it goes beyond the confines of discussing proliferation issues to as broad and rich an agenda as possible.''

He also spoke of President Clinton's desire to visit the region late this year and would recommend a lifting of sanctions if there was progress on nuclear issues.

Replying to a question about the proposed missile tests by India and Pakistan, he said, ''We hope the tests are not imminent. We've made clear our views that additional missile test at this time will not help encourage the atmosphere which we think is important for bringing about improvement'' in relations.

UNI

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