New Delhi, March 15
As US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived here this evening on her maiden bilateral visit to India, key sources in South Block said the Government of India’s focus would be giving a fillip to Indo-US ties rather than Pakistan-related issues.

Pakistan will inevitably come up for discussions between the Indian leadership and Ms Rice and in this context India will raise concern over two issues: (i) Lashkar-e-Toiba’s failed attempt to target India’s IT industry, and (ii) the proposed US arms sales to Pakistan. Sources said India will convey to Ms Rice that the ongoing Indo-Pak peace process would be adversely affected if terrorists were to target Indian IT industry and if Washington were to go ahead with its proposed arms supplies to Islamabad.

Recently Indian security forces had busted a LeT module which revealed that the arrested terrorists had planned to attack offices of Indian IT giants like Infosys. India will convey to Ms Rice that though terrorist activities had been showing a declining trend — as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had himself told Parliament last week that there was a 60 per cent drop in infiltration of terrorists— more needed to be done by Pakistan on this front. Ms Rice would also be told that Washington needed to continue exerting pressure on Islamabad till zero-level of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism is achieved.

On the American arms sales issue, the UPA Government will be making a U-turn on its earlier policy. The late J N Dixit had taken the stand as National Security Adviser that India need not raise the arms sale issue with Washington as the country was well equipped to defend itself. But tomorrow, the Indian leadership would tell Ms Rice that the arms sale and the proposed sale of F-16 fighter aircraft, would damage the Indo-Pak peace process because these kinds of weapons were not required to fight terrorism.

A senior official of the Government of India, when asked by this correspondent as to what would be on top of New Delhi’s agenda during the talks with Ms Rice tomorrow, remarked: “Our focus would be we ourselves. The focus would be Indo-US bilateral relations and not Pakistan-related issues though these issues would definitely be discussed.”

Ms Rice was received at the Palam Technical Area by Mr Jaishanker, Joint Secretary (Americas). All her official engagements are tomorrow, including her call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Ms Rice’s meeting with External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh would be spread over two sessions: one in the restricted format (which will be followed by a joint press interaction) and the second one over lunch.

This is the first visit of a Cabinet-level minister from the United States in the second Bush term. It will be followed by the visits of Transportation Secretary Norman Y Mineta and Treasury Secretary John W Snow. This is Ms Rice’s first visit to India and in fact to South Asia. India is the first stop on Ms Rice’s six-nation Asian tour. Foreign office spokesman Navtej Sarna said Ms Rice has been taking a very close interest in the bilateral relationship between India and the United States during the first term of President Bush and has been also focusing on cooperation in defence and economic ties, as well as in the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) process.

There has been encouraging progress in the NSSP. Since October 2004, when NSSP Phase-I came into effect the lower end of the licenses that accounted for almost 30 per cent of the transactions have been completely delicensed. The processing of the higher end licensing has speeded up both quantitatively and qualitatively. Between October, 2004, and January 2005, 185 licenses were approved and only 22 were denied.