The Hindu : International / India & World : Strategic ties with India important to U.S.: Boucher

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 24, 2004

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International - India & World

Strategic ties with India important to U.S.: Boucher

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, APRIL 23. The United States State Department has said that the strategic partnership with India is important to Washington and it will continue to work "very hard" with India in taking that forward.

The State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, declined comment on a statement made by India's outgoing Ambassador, Lalit Mansingh, that the U.S. not sharing with India the decision to grant Major Non-NATO Ally status to Pakistan was a breach of trust between Washington and New Delhi.

"We have always made clear our relations with India and relations with Pakistan. Both need to move forward; that we're very committed to moving forward with each of these relationships and that we did so through the Secretary's (Colin Powell) visit. We do so every day by the work we do together and that the strategic partnership between India and the United States is a very important one to us and we continue to work very hard with the Indians in moving that forward," he said.

Meanwhile, at the Centre for Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, the Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Christina Rocca, has stressed that South Asia has risen to the "top" of the U.S. foreign policy agenda over the last three years — not just because of anti-terrorism and nuclear non-proliferation but also of the administration's desire to encourage the spread of democracy.

On India, Ms. Rocca maintained that the U.S. saw a great promise for a partnership that offered "enormous benefits" to both countries and that the challenge was to fulfil that potential.

"The U.S.-India political relationship is rapidly maturing and is probably better than it has ever been since 1947 ... Politicians in India and the United States have discovered what you academics have known instinctively for years: that the world's two largest democracies have always had more that ties us together than pulls us apart," Ms. Rocca said. The leaders of India and the U.S. had announced the "next steps" in implementing the "shared vision" that will see increased cooperation in civilian nuclear activities, civilian space programmes and high-tech trade, besides expanding the dialogue on strategic stability that would include missile defence, she added.

Another area of improvement in the bilateral relationship was in the realm of economic and commercial relations. "We are India's largest trading partners but our bilateral trade remains far below what it could be. Improving that situation is one of our primary objectives with India." The U.S. Ambassador in New Delhi, David Mulford, is "working hard to overcome more quickly the barriers that still stand in the way of a significantly bigger, freer and more productive trade relationship between our two countries," she said.

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