The Hindu : National : Let not Pentagon take your time, says internal advisory

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Saturday, Jul 29, 2006

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National

Let not Pentagon take your time, says internal advisory

Sandeep Dikshit

Defence officials, Service chiefs told to limit interaction with U.S. officials

NEW DELHI : An internal advisory has advised senior Defence Ministry officials and the three Service chiefs to limit their interaction with U.S. officials.

The large number of engagements with American service and civil officials left little time to pursue military diplomacy and developing military-to-military relations with other countries, said a senior Defence Ministry official.

The advisory, issued earlier this month, comes a few months after the Indian Air Force severely curtailed joint exercises with other countries including the U.S.

The Army has also reduced the number of exercises with American troops and extended the ambit to include Russia and other countries.

The Navy normally holds one joint exercise with navies of each foreign country but staff level meetings with counterparts from the U.S. Navy are as intensive as by the other two services.

These round-the-year discussions with Pentagon officials had led to several requests from other countries pending for a long time, particularly from the European Union and Africa, leading to complaints to the Ministry of External Affairs, said the official.

Indian military diplomacy now involves a much wider swathe of countries and officials and Service chiefs have made it a point to include Latin American countries in their itinerary.

Still, official circles feel parings of the number of trips to the U.S. and reciprocal visits by civilian officials and military officers would leave more time to develop closer ties with countries in the immediate neighbourhood as well as in other continents.

The advisory also comes against the backdrop of the Left Parties expressing concern over the large-scale defence collaboration with the U.S. since the time of the Vajpayee Government and continuation of the same policy by the present dispensation.

Earlier this year, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) had said the signing of several agreements and moves to ink several others "will further tie up the Indian armed forces with the U.S. armed forces."

Later, at the United Progressive Alliance - Left Coordination Committee meeting last month, the Left Parties had pointed out that Government's two years were marked by "ominous pointers" to the U.S. design to incrementally block India's ability to pursue an independent foreign policy on global and international issues and compromise India's strategic interests through deepened military collaboration.

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