The United States' efforts to isolate Iran for its alleged clandestine development of a nuclear weapons capability will figure in the strategic talks between Washington and New Delhi this week, but whether India will be issued a waiver from sanctions against those nations that do not dramatically curtail oil imports from Iran will not be a part of the discussions, a senior US official has indicated.
Senior diplomatic sources also asserted that India is not coming to the talks seeking a waiver from the US sanctions that will be triggered at the end of this month unless granted a waiver -- as Japan and 11 other nations have -- for drastically reducing its oil imports from Iran.
Assistant Secretary of State Robert O Blake, the administration's point man for South Asia, in an interaction that followed his keynote address in Washington on Thursday, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the upcoming US-India Strategic Dialogue, declared that when it comes to opposition to Iran acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, the US and India were on the same page.
"This is something that Secretary (of State, Hillary) Clinton talked a lot about in her talks in Delhi when was there in early May," he said, and added, "She came away quite encouraged by the progress that we have seen."
Blake noted, "If you read what External Affairs Minister (S M) Krishna in his joint press conference said and if you read what the Secretary said, they are virtually identical."
"Both of them talked about the need to encourage Iran to come to the negotiating table with the P5 plus one and to negotiate in good faith -- negotiate seriously. Both countries talked about how we do not have an interest in seeing another nuclear weapons state in the region, but that Iran should have access to civil nuclear energy provided it is going to be transparent and obey all of the accepted rules," he said.
Blake said both countries had also "talked about how it is important to observe the market signals and the markets are saying that it's time to diversify and not simply rely on Iranian oil. So, India talked about how for its own reasons it is taking steps now to reduce its reliance on Iranian oil and sourcing more from other countries."
As far the US was concerned, he said, it was "certainly a very welcome development."
He noted, "We have made some good progress in our conversation about this."
Blake acknowledged that "we certainly understand that India has important interests in Iran," and pointed out, "for one thing, if it wants to continue all the important things that it is doing in Afghanistan, it must have access to Iranian ports to get its equipment and other supplies into Afghanistan because they cannot do so directly overland through Pakistan."
"We certainly understand the important interests like that," he reiterated. "But, again, we are encouraged by the progress that we have seen."
Blake said, "I don't want to get into the waiver process. We will just have to see how that plays out. But again, we have had some good conversations in New Delhi on the subject."
