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Clinton to visit India in Feb-March: US ambassador

United States Ambassador Richard Celeste has confirmed President Bill Clinton's visit to India in February-March next year. Celeste said the visit will take place irrespective of the situation in Pakistan or whether Clinton chooses to miss Islamabad from his itinerary.

In an interview to Star Newshour, Celeste said, ''the PPresident will visit India early next year but that is not contingent in any way with our relationship with Pakistan. He is likely to visit one or two other South Asian countries, and his visit to India will be designed to meet and engage India's leaders.''

Celeste also emphasised that India and Pakistan were no longer treated uniformly by the United States foreign policy establishment, and hinted that India was now on a different plane.

''I think it is clear that the United States wants to have a strong, robust relationship with India that is appropriate with India's role in the 21st century, and we are going to pursue that on a bilateral basis. At the same time, we want, of course, a friendly relationship with Pakistan, but the two should not be glued together. There needs to be a separate independent policy for both.''

At the same time, Celeste claimed the future of Indo-US relations and the end of sanctions was crucially dependent on the progress achieved in the nuclear dialogue between External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.

''Some of the sanctions relate to getting to a point where we have harmonised our views on non-proliferation. A full blown relationship with India and Pakistan is possible only if we get beyond our views on non-proliferation,'' said Celeste.

The ambassador described the ongoing talks as constructive, but was unable to specify in what direction progress had actually been made.

''This is an ongoing discussion, and this is why I was in London last week for the Talbott-Jaswant talks. I have had the privilege of watching two extraordinary representatives of our governments communicating with each other. The trend is positive and the work is encouraging and I believe the next few months are going to be constructive.''

UNI

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