HVK Archives: India joins issue with U.S. officials
India joins issue with U.S. officials - The Times of India
Prakash Nanda
()
May 19, 1998
Title: India joins issue with U.S. officials
Author: Prakash Nanda
Publication: The Times of India
Date: May 19, 1998
After a week of restraining itself over the Clinton
administration's allegations against India for its nuclear
explosions, New Delhi on Monday joined issue with Washington by
saying that some of the key officials in Washington were
spreading heer lies'.
At the same time, New Delhi hinted at adopting a two-pronged
strategy in relation to the U.S., the essence of which was to
differentiate between anti-India elements in the Clinton
administration and the U.S. as a country and to act accordingly
"India has refrained from commenting so far, keeping in mind the
confidentiality of diplomatic exchanges. It has, however, now
become necessary to reject this allegation. We cannot accept any
claim of misrepresentation," said a ministry of external affairs
spokesman.
The Indian reaction was necessitated because of the statements of
two key Clinton administration officials - national security
adviser Sandy Berger and the department of state spokesman James
Rubin. The U.S. officials had said that New Delhi had
deliberately misled the United States in "twenty or more
meetings" by giving ssurances" and "guarantees" that it would
never exercise its nuclear option.
"India never gave any assurances or guarantees. In fact, it was
clearly pointed out (to U.S. officials) that no assurances could
be given" since the exercise of a nuclear option had always been
non-negotiable for India, said the spokesman. "It seems that the
outbursts by the U.S. government representatives have more to do
with the internal debate in U.S. circles, and the charges being
levelled against certain sections of it."
Though the spokesman did not elaborate on the "internal debate",
according to South Block sources the comments from both Mr Berger
and Mr Rubin reflected "a defensive approach" in the wake of
President Clinton's reported unhappiness over American diplomatic
and intelligence failures to detect that India was going to
conduct a series of nuclear tests.
The bottom line of the Indian countercharge against the Clinton
administration is that in all recent bilateral parleys, termed
trategic dialogue", both countries had agreed to downplay their
differences and concentrate, instead, on the cooperative aspects.
India's nuclear option was one area where India. had always
differed with the US.
Meanwhile, the reported remark of U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations Bill Richardson, who had visited India last month, that
the nuclear tests by India were accelerated to a certain extent
by Pakistan launching its Ghauri missile, has been appreciated by
New Delhi.
So is former President Jimmy Carter's criticism that Washington
has no moral right to criticise India while it has 8000-odd
nuclear weapons and Senator Daniel Moynihan's advice to President
Clinton that India, like China, should be allowed to join the NPT
and CTBT as a nuclear power.
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