Just in time ... US to resume defence supplies to India
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
NEW DELHI: The US has agreed to resume defence supplies to India and asked New Delhi to send its requirements to work out the details.
The assurance about defence supplies was given by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld during his two-hour talks with defence minister George Fernandes here Monday.
Defence ministry officials said the specifics and details of the supplies would be decided later. Defence supplies have been frozen since the Pokhran-II tests.
Rumsfeld, here on a brief working visit after a trip to Islamabad, said Indo-US military-to-military ties were poised to take a big leap forward. The Indo-US defence ties would be sharply boosted in the coming days, with US under-secretary of defence for policy Douglas Feith and Pacific Command chief Admiral Dennis Blair scheduled to visit New Delhi soon.
During a joint news conference after the talks, Fernandes, whom Rumsfeld invited to visit the US, said the two countries looked forward to establishing a long-lasting strategic relationship. "We discussed some specifics about our defence partnership, including certain items we need to acquire and collaborations we can have," he said. He did not elaborate.
During the talks, the issue of US sanctions also came up. Rumsfeld said the US state department and the Indian government would soon discuss "the status" of the few remaining sanctions still in place against New Delhi, imposed after the 1998 nuclear tests, which deal with prohibitions against technology transfer in the nuclear and missile programmes.
The US also reassured India that its war against terrorism was indeed going to be a global one, with the Taliban, bin Laden and his Al-Qaida network being the clear and present targets at the moment.
Though Rumsfeld deftly side-stepped specific questions on Pakistan's role in abetting cross-border terrorism in India, he emphasised the US efforts would target terrorist networks wherever they exist once the Afghanistan campaign came to a logical end.
"President Bush has been very clear that the effort against terrorism is a global one," he said.
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