ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Bush showers praise on India

Jonathan Wright in Washington

Republican front-runner George W Bush foreshadowed a decisive shift in US attitudes towards South Asia yesterday, saying the United States should pay more attention to India.

In the first major foreign policy speech of his campaign to be president, Bush spoke positively and at length about India. He added one short compensatory sentence about Pakistan, India's rival and a US cold war ally.

He said, ''Often overlooked in our strategic calculations is that great land that rests at the south of Eurasia. This coming century will see democratic India's arrival as a force in the world. A vast population, before long the world's most populous nation. A changing economy, in which three of its five wealthiest citizens are software entrepreneurs.

''India is now debating its future and its strategic path, and the United States must pay it more attention. We should establish more trade and investment with India as it opens to the world. We should work with the Indian government, ensuring it is a force for stability and security in Asia,'' he added.

Almost as an afterthought, he added, ''This should not undermine our longstanding relationship with Pakistan, which remains crucial to the peace of the region.''

His remarks reflect a view increasingly heard among Republican senators, for whom India's democratic traditions should give it preference over coup-plagued Pakistan.

Senator Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican who chairs the South Asia subcommittee of the Senate foreign relations committee, said earlier this year that India and the United States ''share basic values and interests''.

It made no sense, he said, to reward China, a country with which the United States has serious problems, while punishing India for the nuclear tests it conducted last year.

Governor Bush's positive remarks on India also go some way to neutralise the perception that he favoured last month's military coup against Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharief.

During a pop quiz on the names of world leaders, Bush said of Pakistani military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, ''It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that's good news for the sub-continent.''

During the cold war, India was a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, which Washington saw as hostile to its interests and sympathetic to the Soviet Union. For years Pakistan was a member of Cento, the alliance which the United States set up to stop the Soviet Union expanding southwards.

Bush said the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was not the answer to proliferation. Instead, the United States should address the security concerns of countries which renounce nuclear weapons.

India, while willing eventually to sign the treaty, says the United States has begun to show more understanding of India's own security needs.

An Indian diplomatic source in Washington said Bush's comments looked positive. They reflected a trend in US attitudes towards India, helped by the success of the Indian community in the United States, the success of Indian information technology and its democratic tradition, he added.

Reuters

Tell us what you think of this report