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U.S. willing to 'give a push' to ties with India

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington MAY 10. India's National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra, who met the U.S. President, George W. Bush, on Thursday, undoubtedly the high point of his visit to Washington, also held extensive discussions over the last two days with top administration officials including his American counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and the Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz.

The range of issues discussed with officials here included India's recent initiatives as they pertained to Pakistan which is supposed to have figured prominently; the regional situations in South Asia and other areas and bilateral relations. Mr. Mishra stressed that he had sensed a willingness on the part of the Republican administration to "give a push" to bilateral relations in a number of areas that would include the economic, scientific and technical components.

During his 45-minute meeting with Gen. Powell, Mr. Mishra went over the entire ground of the relationship over and beyond the realm of bilateral relations to a discussion of regional issues and Afghanistan.

According to a State Department spokesman, Gen. Powell told Mr. Mishra that the administration was "very pleased" with some of the developments in India and Pakistan over the last several weeks and the willingness of the two countries to look at other possibilities for easening the tensions apart from what had already been put in place.

"The Secretary expressed that this morning to the Indian National Security Adviser... they had a very good meeting today of a broad range of issues in U.S.-India relations, but also of questions of India's relations with Pakistan," the spokesman, Richard Boucher, said.

To a question on the kind of role the U.S. was playing vis-a-vis India and Pakistan and if there could be a contradiction in New Delhi's stance, Mr. Mishra maintained that one would have to make a distinction between the role played by the U.S. and others in the "prevention of conflict" between India and Pakistan versus the bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan in the solution of the Kashmir problem.

"Unless you have that distinction in mind, you will not understand what is going on between the U.S. and India and other countries," Mr. Mishra said. "It is their legitimate interest," he said of the U.S. and others who wished to see the prevention of conflict between India and Pakistan.

Also there was the caution against "mixing up" India-U.S. relations with that of India-Pakistan relations. There are, for instance, differences between Washington and New Delhi over the role assigned to Pakistan in the global war against terrorism. Here, India and the U.S. "agree to disagree", but the bottom line is the agreement by the two countries for the deepening of their relationship.

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