No political reward for India: Talbott

Washington, Feb 21: US Deputy secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who has been engaged in the non-proliferation dialogue with India for th...

Washington, Feb 21: US Deputy secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who has been engaged in the non-proliferation dialogue with India for the last eight months, has said that India must not be rewarded politically in any way for its open defiance last May of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968.

In an article in the forthcoming March-April issue of the foreign affairs magazine, he adopted a much sharper tone in rejecting suggestions by “some Indians that their country’s new, self-declared status as a nuclear power enhances its claim to permanent membership on the UN Security Council. The United States disagrees.”

Washington Post commentator Jim Hogland who quoted the article in his opinion piece, India: The Nuclear Challenge,’ says Talbott is concentrating on winning agreement from New Delhi and Islamabad to halt testing, to stop producing fissionable material and to refrain from deploying nuclear-capable missiles.

“Strategic restraint” will be rewarded with a further relaxing of USEconomic sanctions and other concessions, including a long-delayed visit from president Bill Clinton, the article indirectly suggests. Talbott said “having India and Pakistan stabilise their nuclear competition at the lowest possible level is both the starting point and the near-term objective of the US diplomatic effort. The Clinton administration does not expect either country to alter or constrain its defence programmes simply because we have asked it to.”