New Delhi, March 8
A week from now, until next month end, India will play host to leaders of three major international powers — US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on March 16 and 17, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in the first week of April and Japanese Premier Junichiro Koizumi in late April.
Diplomatic sources told The Tribune today that though “nothing spectacular” was expected from Ms Rice visit, it would certainly give a fillip to the Indo-US strategic partnership.
“Since 1979, the nuclear proliferation cloud has been hanging over Indo-US bilateral relationship. Now that ghost is beginning to be exorcised, though it is still a long long way when Washington will sell an American nuclear reactor to India. That would be really a giant step. But as for now, the two countries are moving steadily in that direction,” a senior diplomat explained.
There are two important elements in the Indo-US Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) — cooperation in nuclear issues and space. This is perhaps for the first time in the history of Indo-US relations when Washington has embarked upon certain programme with India without bothering about its balancing game with Pakistan and not seeing India through the prism of Pakistan. That is because Washington realises the problems of Pakistan and that madarsas and high technology do not go hand in hand.
The Ministry of External Affairs is approaching Ms Rice’s visit as an important top-level contact between the two governments which is taking place so early in the tenure of Ms Rice, who got confirmed as Secretary of State just about two months ago.
The MEA is confident that Ms Rice is a Secretary
of State India could do business with for various reasons. One, Ms Rice is better disposed towards India than her predecessor General Colin Powell who was known as a friend of General Pervez Musharraf. Secondly, during her tenure as National Security Adviser in the George Bush administration Ms Rice had taken a number of decisions for forging closer ties between Washington and New Delhi. The NSSP was one of these and Ms Rice is the progenitor of NSSP.
As for the India visits of the Premiers of China and Japan, the two visits are going to be high-profile ones. New Delhi and Beijing are working hard to make Mr Wen’s visit to India a mega success during which several agreements are expected to be signed. Mr Wen and his Indian counterpart, Dr Manmohan Singh, are expected to break new grounds in finding ways and means of resolving their decades-old boundary dispute.
As for Mr Koizumi’s India visit, it marks a big turnaround from May, 1998, when Tokyo had come out with a strong reaction in the wake of India’s nuclear tests and imposed sanctions on India. This will be the first visit by Mr Koizumi to India and the first by a Japanese Premier since August 2000.
