An upbeat note in Indo-U.S. ties

The encouraging signals that the Finance Minister Mr. Yashwant Sinha, seems to have received now from his U.S. interlocutors point to the possibility of an early move by the Bush administration to scrap the economic sanctions still in place against India.

The confidence exuded by Mr. Sinha amplifies the extraordinary note of optimism that the External Affairs and Defense Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, had struck after his recent talks with the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, and other top officials. Both Mr. Sinha and Mr. Singh did not take the initiative to discuss the sanctions issue with their respective American interlocutors and instead left it to them to do so from their perspective.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Sinha has now made the point that the U.S. initiative "is an indication of their keen desire to be able to do away with it (the sanctions regime) as quickly as possible." New Delhi has indeed taken a consistent line that these sanctions "hurt" the U.S. interests more than those of India.

The move, calling for an end to the sanctions, was initiated on the ground that the Indo-U.S. nexus "has become one of the most significant emerging relationships in the world." In one sense, the relatively new feel-good mood in the ties between the governments of the two large democracies is shared on the Capitol, too. Simply put, an economic embargo can only erode, if not also stifle, the spirit of an expanding U.S.-India engagement.

In a realpolitik sense, the resolution of the sanctions issue may not fully determine the tone of New Delhi's future interaction with the U.S. The same applies to Washington's expectations of India in respect of the larger strategic questions such as nuclear non-proliferation and missile defense as also the conventional political controversies.

Yet, the current move in the U.S. to evaluate the disutility of the prevalent sanctions acquires some strategic meaning, too, in the context of a reported perception in the Bush administration that India has earned the right to sit at the table of global powers.

-- The Hindu, New Delhi