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India, U.S. wrapping up nuclear talks

By C. Raja Mohan

WASHINGTON SEPT. 19. While the Bush Administration has adopted a positive attitude towards high technology cooperation with India, there will be continuity with some strands of the earlier American non-proliferation policy, according to informed sources here.

"Continuity with the approach of the Clinton Administration towards India is a sensible thing," the former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott, told The Hindu in a conversation here.

Mr. Talbott's remarks come amid a frenetic round of negotiations between India and the United States to work out a new agreement on high technology cooperation and non-proliferation that have vexed bilateral relations for nearly three decades.

The new understandings are likely to be announced on Tuesday when the U.S. President, George W. Bush, meets the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in New York, on the margins of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Mr. Talbott who now heads the Brookings Institution in Washington had conducted an intensive nuclear dialogue with the then External Affairs Minister of India, Jaswant Singh, for nearly two years after the nuclear tests of May 1998.

While the Talbott-Singh dialogue produced many positive outcomes, it remained inconclusive and the fundamental nuclear differences between the two sides remained. Mr. Talbott said India had not done enough to address the nuclear benchmarks laid down by the Clinton Administration.

Until its very last day, the Clinton Administration had insisted that the full potential of Indo-U.S. relations could not be realised until New Delhi offered satisfaction to Washington on non-proliferation.

The Bush Administration does indeed acknowledge the remaining nuclear differences with India. But it argues, in contrast to the Clinton Administration, that the Indo-U.S. divergence over non-proliferation can be best addressed by more intensive cooperation and engagement with New Delhi as an emerging great power and partner.

Some of the benchmarks — the Indian support to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the negotiations on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty — that Mr. Talbott had set for Mr. Singh are not central to the Bush Administration.

But there is likely to be continuity on the question of export controls, another benchmark from the past in the Indo-U.S. nuclear dialogue. India should have little difficulty in adopting higher domestic standards on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries, given its long-standing political commitment to non-proliferation.

India had always said its track record on preventing the flow of advanced technologies to other countries is a serious one. After its nuclear tests, India had strengthened the law to prevent the outflow of sensitive technologies and materials and related resources.

In liberalising the conditions for high technology transfers in the three areas of civil nuclear energy, non-military space programmes and commercial technologies that can be used for military purposes, the Bush Administration wants tougher non-proliferation laws in India and their tighter enforcement. India has also repeatedly assured the world that technologies acquired from outside for peaceful uses will not be diverted to military purposes.

Asked about the bureaucratic resistance in the U.S. Government to a liberal technology transfer policy towards India, Mr. Talbott said the opposition was not merely from the non-proliferation lobby in Washington. Many other sections too feel strongly about India's nuclear defiance of the world in 1998.

"If India wants to be seen as part of the nuclear solution and not the global nuclear problem, it must take strong and courageous steps on non-proliferation and set an example for others," Mr. Talbott said.

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