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Vajpayee to present CTBT on iced platter to new govt

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

With Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's caretaker government virtually suspending the Indo-US dialogue, senior officials at the external affairs ministry Tuesday underscored that India's signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has returned to the cold storage.

On the first anniversary of the Pokhran II tests, senior MEA officials at the America Desk pointed out, the Indian polity is in a peculiar situation. "With the dissolved 12th Lok Sabha and a caretaker government in office, no major policy decision can be taken until a new government assumes office," they said.

Preliminary indications are that the new government would assume office only in the second week of October. And hence, there is little chance of India signing the treaty before the September deadline.

The officials said the caretaker government had more or less suspended the Indo-US dialogue

About External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh's talks with US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott on nuclear and missile issues, the officials emphasised that since the last round of discussion, both New Delhi and Washington had indicated that there was not much headway except a "better understanding" of each other's compulsions.

Significantly, the Congress has launched a virulent campaign against the Vajpayee government, saying there was need for building up a national consensus on the CTBT. Which implies that India's largest opposition party, if it came to power, would take its own time to sign the CTBT. Thus, the US is in no position to ask a caretaker government to sign the CTBT -- for, that exercise may not be ratified by the 13th Lok Sabha.

They, however, felt that a conducive atmosphere would be created if the US lifted the sanctions it clamped on India following the Pokhran II tests. That would facilitate any political party coming to power to think favourably about the American demand.

Meanwhile, other MEA officials pointed out that China's sharp reaction to the bombing of its embassy in Belgrade was being viewed in Indian diplomatic circles as an attempt to draw the maximum possible mileage out of a tragic incident. Underlining that the Chinese economy was dependent on foreign institutional and direct investments from Western Europe and the US, they said that any disruption or discontinuation of these would inevitably trigger its collapse.

If the US refused to grant the most favoured nation status to China for one year, the booming Chinese presence would vanish overnight from the US markets, they warned.

Similarly, the Chinese predominance in the entire Asia was largely dependent upon the cordiality it maintained with the US, the officials said. Therefore, China could ill afford to strain Sino-US relations.

Beijing would also try to extract a concession from the US in its ethnic cleansing in the Tibet autonomous region and in Xinjiang province, they added.

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