New York Times
Sunday, July 17, 2005

India to Seek Expanded Access to U.S. Nuclear Technology

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

NEW DELHI, July 16 - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Friday that persuading the United States to share more of its nuclear technology would be a priority in his meeting next week with President Bush, and said he hoped the two countries would move from being "estranged" to "engaged" on issues of mutual interest.

"It's much too presumptuous on my part to say that I can predict the outcome, but I am looking forward, with hope, that out of this visit we will have a stronger, more durable, more productive relationship with the United States," he said in an interview. "People have described in the past our two countries' relations as two estranged democracies," Dr. Singh said. "I would like to work towards a new era where our two democracies are engaged."

After India's independence from Britain in 1947, the politics of the cold war era infused India-United States relations with mutual distrust. Change came slowly, with the opening up of India's economy in 1991 - Dr. Singh, an Oxford-educated economist and the finance minister at the time, was its chief architect - and relations fell to a new low in 1998, when India conducted nuclear tests.

India, which is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, has been clamoring for fuel and technology. United States law bars export of technology that could aid a nuclear program to any country that has not signed the treaty.

Dr. Singh said he was encouraged by previous meetings with Mr. Bush on nuclear technology. "The president himself has mentioned to me a country like India needs to be helped to reach its full potential in the area of nuclear energy," he said.

Relations between the countries warmed considerably after Sept. 11, 2001, with joint warfare exercises and Washington's offer of fighter planes for the Indian Air Force. A defense pact signed in June promised joint weapons production and multinational peacekeeping operations.

The United States is India's largest trading partner, and Washington has welcomed India's new patent law restricting production of low-cost Indian-made generic drugs and an "open skies" agreement intended to draw American airline companies to a booming Indian market.

In a telling snapshot of Indian perceptions, a survey commissioned by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in June found that Indians were singular in the world for having a positive view of United States policy.

Indian officials have been eager in recent weeks to emphasize what they refer to as a "convergence of interests" between New Delhi and Washington: a common stance against terrorism, a shared interest in the opportunities of a booming Indian economy, the need to stabilize global oil prices and, increasingly, what one senior official called "the affinities we have as democracies."

In the wide-ranging half-hour interview on Friday in his official residence, the prime minister hit the same notes. Offering an implicit contrast to China, he described India as a unique social experiment based on "an open society and an open economy," and dismissed the idea that India could be used as a bulwark against its ever-mightier neighbor.

"I think a strong India is in the interests of Asia and I think in the interests of the world, but that doesn't mean we are in competition with China," Dr. Singh said. "I don't think our relationship with the United States is at the cost of our relationships with China, with Russia or, for that matter, the E.U."

Dr. Singh, 72, a soft-spoken farmer's son, pointed out - as he has to in a country where members of his own government harbor reservations about an alliance with the United States - that India would not sacrifice its policy of independence.

"We are an independent power, we are not a client state, we are not a supplicant," Dr. Singh said. "As two equal societies, we should explore together where there is convergence of interests and work together."

Indeed, the discussions about Dr. Singh's visit to Washington have started a furious debate here. As relations between the world's oldest democracy and its largest grow warmer, Indian politicians, intellectuals and policy makers ask: what does it mean to be a friend of America?

"The challenge of India is to have a close alliance with the U.S. without becoming a poodle," said Jairam Ramesh, a member of Parliament with the ruling Congress Party. "It's a very delicate thing. There is simply no alternative to building a close alliance with the United States."

Discussions of India-United States ties are still colored with distrust.

The leftist parties that belong to Dr. Singh's coalition government have criticized the new defense pact as a threat to India's credibility.

Skeptics have wondered aloud whether India will get the high-technology help it wants. Others worry whether linking arms with the United States could subject a country painfully familiar with terrorism to a new round of political violence, or at least, sour its relations with countries in the Muslim world.

India's aspirations for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, meanwhile, took a blow this week when the United States rejected a proposal to enlarge it to include India, Japan, Germany, Brazil and two unidentified African states as permanent members. Dr. Singh did not say he would raise the Security Council issue with Mr. Bush.

Proponents of the new India-United States amity see long-term advantages for India.

"If America is supportive of Indian aspirations, it facilitates it," said Uday Bhaskar of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses here. "India is concerned about what price it is going to pay.

"At the moment that has not been defined adequately. That's the anxiety: what's the pound of flesh?"

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a political analyst, read in the United States-India camaraderie a larger message about India's idea of itself. "We've learned to project power," he argued. "A crucial element of being able to project that power is to say we can deal with the United States, we are so confident nothing of our core self-interests will be compromised. I actually think it's foolhardy."