The Hindu : Evolving India-Pakistan ties encouraging, says Rumsfeld

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Thursday, Jan 15, 2004

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Evolving India-Pakistan ties encouraging, says Rumsfeld

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, JAN. 14. The United States has a "good, healthy" relationship with India encompassing the political, economic and military spheres, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has said.

"Our relationship with India is political, it's economic and it's military. And we have increased military cooperation during the past three years between the U.S. and India. It has been moving apace and we feel good about it. There are a variety of technical things that they or we may be interested at any given time and they are being worked at the appropriate levels," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a briefing here today.

"But I think it's a good, healthy relationship. And I should add parenthetically that the evolving relationship between India and Pakistan is a most encouraging thing," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

His comments came a day after the U.S. President, George W. Bush, unveiled his "Next Steps in Strategic Partnership with India" that would see increased cooperation between the two countries in areas such as civilian nuclear energy, civilian space programmes and trade in high technology. Officials here see the process evolving over the months and years in a phased manner with expanded cooperation pegged to India taking concrete steps to address Washington's concerns on export controls.

But the U.S. administration does not see the process breaking down or coming apart in the future as it "stitches together" the desires of the two countries. "It is a process that stitches together the mandate we have from the President (of the U.S.) and the Prime Minister (of India) to take this relationship to a strategic partnership. It stitches together our desire for India to be a very important partner in global non-proliferation and India's desire to have more trade and more cooperation in these high-tech areas," a senior U.S. official said.

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Evolving India-Pakistan ties encouraging, says Rumsfeld