Celebrations On Hold

THE swift Senate move to empower the Clinton administration with waiver authority over the sanctions regime imposed on India and Pakistan has evoked only cautious optimism. Analysts, both in Washington DC and Wall Street, agree that the executive power was likely to be used more against India than Pakistan.

The July 15 decision did acknowledge that it was futile to subject a large democracy like India to sanctions. Said Prof Stephen P. Cohen, an authority on South Asian matters: "I did note that undersecretary of state Karl Inderfurth's testimony dropped the idea of making India and Pakistan sign the NPT. That is some recognition of reality."

But most India watchers in the US are wary of the Clinton administration's motives. Shekhar Tiwari, the BJP's chief Washington strategist, for instance, is concerned that the administration will now put pressure on India to yield on the nuclear issue. Tiwari, a tight-lipped, media-shy operative, expressed his frustration on the phone from Virginia: "This is most unfortunate. The Senate initiative hands over management to the executive. There's much hostility towards India in the executive; we don't have too many friends there. Now, India will have little negotiating leverage. Indian Embassy officials have little strategic vision when it comes to dealing with the realities of how the American political system works."

The concern is that once the Senate waiver move becomes law, the executive, which will have the carrots and sticks, would tilt towards Islamabad, which is more vulnerable to US cajoling than New Delhi. As a Wall Street analyst put it: "We might very well see a situation where Pakistan gets all the carrots, as it's willing to heed Uncle Sam, and India gets all the sticks."

Dr Mira Kamdar, a board member of the World Policy Institute, noted: "Clinton's request to have Congress give the president the power to lift sanctions and thus be able to extend carrots and sticks, is part of a larger struggle between the executive and legislative branches over foreign policy—who makes it, who implements it, etc."

Added she: "There has been lobbying by US business to make the above point and mitigate against US steps that would jeopar-dise major investment schemes for infrastructure that have taken years of negotiating. Having suffered through the slings and arrows of the misfortunes of India's achingly-slow dismantling of the licence Raj, and the agonisingly slow progress of 'fast-track' projects, it's simply too much for US companies to now see their efforts fail due to their own government's intransigence."

This feeling is seconded by the Indian-American business community. Like Kanwal Rekhi, chairman and CEO of software company CyberMedia, and president of TIE, a predominantly Indian-American organisation of entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley. Or Vinod Dham, president and CEO of Silicon Spice. Says Dham: "I suspect the leniency is due to a combination of factors ranging from the desire to constructively work to minimise further tension in the region to protect the economic interests of US corporate shareholders." Rekhi, a Silicon Valley legend, adds: "The main reason the sanctions are softening is because the US has never had the stomach to go through the pain that sanctions cause."

바카라 웹사이트Kartik Kilachand, director, Asia Stratcon Group Inc, a Connecticut-based investment and consulting firm, struck a note of caution: "The danger I see is if India looks at this lifting as a measure of its own greatness. What India needs to do is start a serious PR campaign on a sustained basis to change or modify US perceptions (shift focus to Sino-India nexus from the India-Pakistan nexus)."

Now that Congress is poised to give some wiggle room to the executive on the lifting of sanctions, where are US-India relations headed? The popular lawmaker from Texas and an influential member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, asserted that ties would reach the level they were at before the tests. "We're going to work through this together, hopefully there'll be an agreement by all parties to renew our efforts to stop nuclear proliferation," she said.

Hopefully, that will be kept in mind by Indian foreign policy consigliere Jaswant Singh and US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott, when they meet in New Delhi on July 20 for their third encounter. Said Rajiv Khanna, president of the influential India-America Chamber of Commerce: "The talks appear to be moving in the right direction, even if they haven't produced a visible, tangible benefit. Indians overseas are also lobbying to see that the sanctions are lifted. But it's far too early to get into the self-congratulation mode." Definitely not.