Clinton invites Indian leader for talks

By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Clinton administration hopes to cap several years of efforts to strengthen ties between the United States and India with a state visit by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, which begins Thursday.

But to maintain this new era of good feeling, talks between President Clinton and Vajpayee won't linger on areas of greatest concern between the two nations - mainly India's nuclear program and hostilities in war-torn Kashmir.

The focus, instead, will be on the newly warmed relationship between India and the United States that began in earnest with Clinton's visit to India in March. During the Cold War, relations between Washington and New Delhi were strained because of India's links to the Soviet Union.

"As the president noted in his trip to India this spring...India is the world's largest democracy. And with the end of the Cold War, we have the opportunity for a new and strengthened relationship with India," White House spokesman P.J. Crowley says.

In New Delhi, the expectations for Vajpayee's trip, which includes an address to a joint session of Congress Thursday, are for a "consolidation of the gains made by the Clinton trip," says Kanti Bajpai, an Indian political analyst visiting Washington's Brookings Institution.

Vajpayee will meet Friday with Clinton and separately with Vice President Gore. He also will be the guest at a White House state dinner Sunday evening.

Bajpai said the central issues Vajpayee wants to discuss with Clinton include:

• The troubled India-Pakistan relationship.
• Continuing a new level of political contact and cooperation between India and the United States.
• Upgrading economic ties between the two countries and stressing to U.S. officials how important India's democracy is to stability in south Asia.

But the issues Clinton and Vajpayee won't highlight loom even larger in determining the long-term health of the U.S.-India relationship - and will be front-burner foreign policy dilemmas for Clinton's successor.

Chief among those concerns is India's fledgling nuclear program. Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998 prompted U.S. economic sanctions against both countries and led U.S. intelligence analysts to label the southeast Asia region as the most dangerous on earth.

The Clinton administration would like India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But the Senate's rejection of the treaty last year and Clinton's lame-duck status give the White House little leverage with Vajpayee.

Of similar and related concern are the continuing tensions between India and Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. The conflict has been at the heart of two of three wars in the last 50 years between the neighbors. More than 30,000 people have died in Kashmir since 1989.

Clinton would dearly love to see progress on finding a formula to bring peace to Kashmir.

India claims Pakistan is backing Muslim militants fighting for freedom in the two-thirds of Kashmir under Indian control. Pakistan maintains it has no control over the guerrillas.

New Delhi regards all of Kashmir as an integral part of India.

Islamabad wants the predominantly Muslim Kashmiris to decide in a United Nations-mandated plebiscite whether to join Islamic Pakistan or Hindu-majority India.

But U.S. administration officials say they expect no new proposals on Kashmir, primarily because Clinton is wary of India's adamant insistence that there be no outside mediators - particularly the United States - in the conflict.

Instead, Clinton and Vajpayee will pay more attention to economics, and how to foster more U.S. investment in India, which is one of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Its formidable high-tech sector has supplied a steady flow of skilled workers to U.S. companies in recent years.

"We have averaged a stable and consistent growth of over 6% a year in the last decade. We have laid the foundation for significantly higher long-term growth of 7% and beyond. This is something few economies can claim with certitude," Vajpayee said in a speech to the Asia Society last week in New York, where he had traveled to attend the United Nations Millennium Summit.

"It is my belief that when the history of India-U.S. partnership is written, the six-month period between March and September 2000, beginning with President Clinton's visit to India and culminating with my return visit, will be seen as the defining moment," India's leader said.

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