WASHINGTON, January 9: The current political turmoil in New Delhi has resulted in United States President Bill Clinton heading for Africa around the same time he was to have visited India.US officials say the President is planning to visit South Africa and some other countries in sub-Saharan Africa towards the end of March, following the postponement of his India trip. According to the original White House plan, the President was to visit Pakistan, India and Bangladesh between mid-February and end-March of this year. But the trip was cancelled due to the political crisis in India.Although President Clinton has said that he is still committed to the visit and White House officials have indicated November as a possible month for the deferred journey, analysts say the visit will be a vastly diluted one. According to current plans, Clinton may stop by in India en route to the Association of Petroleum Exporting Countries summit in South East Asia in November.That means the trip will be delinked from India's Golden Jubilee celebrations, which was the original peg for the visit. The window for the Golden Jubilee was touted as being from August 15, 1997 to August 15, 1998.Sources said that keeping this in view, the Gujral Government was keen that Clinton go ahead with his visit despite the caretaker nature of the governance in New Delhi. But US officials demurred, not the least because the Bharatiya Janata Party made noises about the impropriety of such a visit. It was also obvious that such a visit would not have much substance to it.Clinton was so keen on the India visit that a White House advance party had been dispatched in November for a recce. The team visited New Delhi, Agra and Bangalore among other places. In Bangalore, the team inspected the campus of the Indian Institute of Science, recently voted as Asia's top academic institution. The US team explored the possibility of the President addressing the faculty by checking out the auditoria and security aspects.The same team has now been dispatched to Africa to check out the airports, travel arrangements and hotel facilities for the large team of officials, security personnel and media that will go with the President.Indian and US officials dealing with India are disappointed about New Delhi's disappearance from the US foreign policy radar screen. In the first place, it had got there after years of neglect and 1997 was a year of frenzied activity resulting in the announcement of a Presidential visit. Three Clinton cabinet members visited India between November 15 and December 15, but exactly around the same time, the Gujral Government collapsed and fresh elections were called for, putting everything on the backburner. ``We are back to a state of inertia,'' one Indian official admitted, saying everyone was waiting for the heat and dust of elections to settle down and a new government to be sworn in.
