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Fear not a rising India: US official

By Arun Kumar, IANS

Washington : Rather than fear India’s global transformation, it’s critical for the United States to forge broad-based partnerships with a country increasingly exerting its influence on the world, suggests a senior American defence official.

“It’s about maintaining a type of equilibrium, about accepting India’s rise into a type of maturity and power and prowess I think we broadly welcome,” said James Clad, deputy assistant secretary of defence for South and Southeast Asia.

“The US-India strategic potential is very, very profound,” he told online journalists in a conference call from the Pentagon. “We’re coming into something that’s naturally there. It’s like a seat which is already at the table, and we’re sliding into it.”

“It’s been slow in coming – I think it will be slow in coming in the future – but it is steady. The trend lines are unmistakable,” Clad said, describing the relationship as one consisting of multiple rich layers.

Comparing US relationship with India and Pakistan, Clad said while Pakistan continues to search for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and help wage the global war on terrorism, the US-Indian relationship is more important in the long run.

“I think it’s fair to say, and it goes back to the previous administration as well as this present administration, that the importance of India…just in terms of trade, in terms of presence in Asia, in terms of self-sustaining economic development, that India simply must, as a long-term consideration, matter more for us than Pakistan,” he said.

“And when I say that, what I want to stress is that people have spent a lot of time thinking about how you can adequately describe one country and the other.

“I think the preferred formula now,” he said, “is to describe Pakistan as a country that’s very significant within its region, modernising as well, and that we hope will return to the democratic past and elections are scheduled, … and also (as) the extraordinarily important partner in the war on terrorism.”

On the other hand, “The India relationship now is more comprehensive in trade, information technology, movement of its peoples, Clad said noting, “There are 2 million Indian-Americans now living in the United States.”

India is on a major course to ramp up its military infrastructure, he said, with a multi-billion budget at the ready to purchase, among other equipment, 126 multi-role combat aircraft.

“It is the largest external-announced defence procurement budget in the world,” Clad said. “And people are obviously interested in this.”

Clad noted that 52 US defence corporations, including “brass nameplates” like Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Ratheon, Honeywell and General Electric, have all set up offices in India. “That’s a lot.”

Each US military service participates in training exercises with Indian troops and Indian ports welcome US Navy ships, Clad said. A recent visit by the USS Nimitz to Chennai “was an enormous success, greeted with great interest by the people of the city.”

Referring to Indian Navy’s first ever acquisition of a US warship, the USS Trenton commission as INS Jalashwa, Clad said, “This is a substantial vessel which has been very well received in Indian naval circles.”

Besides military partnerships, Clad said, Indian-American economic partnerships also are important, and in many cases already are in place.

“You hit a golf ball on the Bangalore golf course, and that ball, unless you ‘re careful, is going to go right through a window of IBM, which is right next to Infosys, which is an Indian firm staffed by Indian-Americans who are also listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So it’s a much bigger relationship.”