A Feel-Good Jaunt

PROLIFERATION is not the only issue that I want to talk about," US secretary of state Madeleine Albright told prime minister I.K. Gujral when they met on November 19 during her abbreviated visit to India. But this well summed up the new mood between the two countries. The leadership in New Delhi and Washington is looking at ways to move beyond nonproliferation and other contentious issues to which Indo-US ties have been held hostage for a long time.

Explains a senior ministry of external affairs (MEA) official: "The new mood signifies that we will talk because commonalities and mutualities of our interests far outweigh the difficulties in our relationship." The dialogue, he said, "had qualitatively changed and released from being hostage to preconceived insularities and narrowness". Another senior diplomat concurs: "We should not let disagreements dominate our relations," pointing out that India and the US were in the "early stages of a novel" and the script was a long one.

This upbeat mood was reflected in foreign secretary K. Raghunath's comments to the press. Normally an extremely guarded diplomat, Raghunath said "the discussions helped take our relationship forward and chalked out broad directions." In a way, he added, "a new chapter has been opened, new areas will be taken up for the dialogue, things that were touched on earlier will constitute the subject for our ongoing dialogue." Coming from a person as cautious as Raghunath, this was quite a comment. Albright, too, was reportedly very pleased with her meeting with Gujral and as one of the participants said, she hit it off quite well with him.

Talking of new areas, Raghunath confirmed for the first time that New Delhi and Washington have been discussing—for quite awhile now—cooperation in the civilian nuclear energy power programme. Gujral told Albright that India has large requirements of energy, which is growing alarmingly, and India needs inputs of technology and equipment to enable this programme to move forward. "We are interested in cooperation with the US and other countries which have such programmes," says Raghunath.

But he did not specify areas where India was seeking the cooperation. The issue is interesting because of the controversy over supply of fuel to Tarapur in the past and, more recently, the sanctions which Americans have imposed on three of India's major nuclear research installations.

Any kind of nuclear cooperation is a tricky affair. Closely tied to it are issues related to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty—India hasn't signed either. Americans have tried hard to persuade India to sign both but to no avail. India managed to block the CTBT last year at the Conference on Disarmament.

India has begun to explore possibilities of private and foreign participation in its civilian nuclear power programme. As Raghunath points out: "Our interests have been clearly identified and we intend to pursue them." But there is no clear thinking on this yet because it would involve amending the Atomic Energy Act as also the laws of the supplier countries, in this case the US. The first inkling of India's interest in cooperation from abroad had come when H.D. Deve Gowda was prime minister. In an interview to a Japanese newspaper, he had said that India was ready to accept private sector participation in the civilian nuclear power programme. The statement created quite an uproar, the nuclear arena being such a holy cow. When the statement was published in India, government spokesmen went out of their way to deny it, even distancing Deve Gowda from the report.

BUT American thinktanks have been discussing whether a deal can be struck which allows help to India's civilian nuclear power programme in return for some restraint. The whole issue is still in its nascent phase and though talks have taken place with the US, these have been sporadic, say sources.

Albright, on her part, proposed talks with India on the complicated question of nuclear safety. This is significant because the Americans have been very worried about the nuclear safety issues in the developing world. In any case, while they are willing to listen to the Indians on the civilian nuclear power programme, they are absolutely clear that they have a whole range of legal and regulatory provisions, which govern any such cooperation. In effect, as far as the Americans are concerned, it means that it is a no-go area in the near future. Besides, as a senior diplomat said, when these things are taken to Washington a lot would depend on "how they are packaged".

At this meeting, Albright reiterated the US stand on CTBT and NPT and nuclear nonproliferation in general. India also flagged its concerns regarding export controls on dual use technology.

Sources said Gujral made an "eloquent statement" of India's concerns about cross-border terrorism from Pakistan. The US side, showing equal concern, particularly after four of its nationals were gunned down in Karachi recently, assured Gujral that they would be vigilant. Gujral referred to the Harkat-ul-Ansar being declared a terrorist organisation under US law and hoped that this would be followed up with more stringent measures, obviously referring to action against other organisations involved in cross-border terrorism.

Albright had earlier raised the terrorism question quite strongly in Islamabad, though her carefully-worded comments on Kashmir hadn't gone down well in the media there. But Albright's handling of the Kashmir issue was in complete contrast to that of her British counterpart Robin Cook, who made a hash of his brief visit to India by showing such enthusiasm about it.

The American secretary of state, who had initially expressed a desire to visit Kashmir, stuck scrupulously to the US line of not mediating in Kashmir, but urging India and Pakistan to take the dialogue forward instead. She reiterated this to Indian parliamentarians. While she spoke in glowing terms about India's track record of democracy and safeguard of human rights, she made "the minor point" of conveying her concerns about not wanting to see the human rights of Kashmiris violated, in an attempt to contain militancy.

The process of economic liberalisation in the country too came in for praise from Albright. She told Gujral that "there is a great opportunity in the economic and commercial sphere. Promising signs are evident as a result of the economic process" in India. However, she also raised the more contentious issues related to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), intellectual property rights (IPR) and quantitative restrictions. She hoped that the dispute pending in the WTO could be sorted out bilaterally before the dispute settlement panel gets into the act in a couple of weeks.

Apparently, finance minister P. Chidambaram, who was also present at the meeting, spoke on WTO, though both he and Gujral hoped that the matter could be sorted out bilaterally. "The matter," as an official said, "is up against a bit of a deadline" and though both Gujral and Chidambaram indicated that they were prepared to look at the previous positions in a fresh light, it appears there is unlikely to be any resolution of the issue bilaterally.

Sources say that Albright and Gujral jelled well in their talks which lasted for just over two hours. Her two-day visit was reduced to less than a day. Sources said though Albright was "deeply distressed" at this hacked itinerary, she was very pleased with her meeting with Gujral and the discussions, as the cliche goes, were wide-ranging, covering other issues, including Iraq and China.

But despite Raghunath describing the talks as "intensive and substantive," the political uncertainty in the country robbed the visit of a great deal of its importance. It isn't certain whether president Bill Clinton will have Gujral as an interlocutor when he arrives here next year. Albright's visit was billed as a run-up to Clinton's visit. On her part, she was too preoccupied with Iraq and, as some Indian observers argue, she need not have come at this time, but put it off for later. Perhaps, in that case, she could have got over the Iraq business and found an interlocutor in India who wouldn't have been as shaky as Gujral is these days.