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U.S. Seeks Closer Military Ties With India
WASHINGTON, May 26 (News Agencies) - In a major geopolitical shift, the United States is looking to forge closer military ties with India as a counter to China and to help stabilize the world's most dangerous nuclear flashpoint, a senior U.S. defense official said.
General Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, next week will make the highest level U.S. military visit to India since the 1998 underground nuclear tests that set off an overt nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan and prompted U.S. sanctions, the official said.
India signaled its readiness for a closer security relationship with Washington earlier this month by responding positively to President George W. Bush's U.S. missile defense initiative, the official said.
"It reflects kind of a diplomatic revolution," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity in an interview Friday.
Never close, the two countries had testy relations during the Cold War when non-aligned India looked to the Soviet Union for military supplies and Washington allied with Pakistan to thwart the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Now, prompted by U.S. concerns about China and the belief that sanctions have allowed nuclear instability to fester on the subcontinent, the administration wants to waive the sanctions and substantively upgrade its military relations with India, the official said.
Lifting the sanctions would allow India to receive military assistance and buy U.S.-made weaponry and military equipment.
"People see us and them having a common concern in Chinese power in the Far East," he said.
Some in the administration see India as a strategic partner in the containment of China, he said, while others regard it as a coming power that has interests in common with Washington.
"In the abstract you could go down the list of common interests, common threats and you could easily conclude that we and the Indians should be strategic allies cooperating to contain the Chinese threat," he said.
But, he cautioned, "a good part of the Indian establishment probably mistrust us more than they mistrust the Chinese."
The official said it would take at least several months to lift the sanctions but "there is a disposition to get beyond sanctions."
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage informed members of Congress several days ago that the State Department supported a presidential waiver to lift sanctions against India, and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also supports a waiver, the official said.
The debate now centers on whether sanctions should be lifted at once or in phases and whether concessions should be required of India, he said.
A presidential waiver would not help Pakistan because it is subject to yet another layer of sanctions imposed in response to a 1999 military coup.
The official said U.S. military cooperation would likely be aimed initially at building relationships that would be crucial if the United States is to gain influence over the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan.
"It's not a big stretch to spin scenarios that end up in nuclear exchanges between India and Pakistan," he said.
A key question is how far to go in helping them reduce the chance of a nuclear exchange, since even benign nuclear cooperation is viewed by arms control advocates within the administration as undermining the non-proliferation treaty, he said.
Some ideas under discussion are to focus on missile launchers, rather than on nuclear warheads and provide advice on ways to prevent accidental launches, he said.
Shared missile early warning also has been discussed conceptually with both sides, but he said it was too soon to consider anything concrete.
The administration also sees opportunities for political cooperation with India on making the case internationally for missile defense, and possibly technological cooperation down the road, he said.
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