Missile reports strike at Indo-U.S. ties

Missile reports strike at Indo-U.S. ties

By Nelson Graves

NEW DELHI (Reuter): U.S. reports that India has moved ballistic missiles to a site near Pakistan have re-ignited distrust that New Delhi and Washington had sought to consign to the Cold War past.

Indian policymakers and defense analysts said U.S. newspaper reports that India had shifted new surface-to-surface Prithvi missiles to within 100 km (60 miles) of its border with Pakistan had prompted predictable denunciations from Islamabad.

But the clamor was not expected to derail an important round of talks scheduled to be held in Islamabad yesterday between the neighbors' top diplomats.

"This will create a little more dust in the air but it will not have any material effect on the talks," Brigadier Vijai Nair, executive director of the Forum for Strategic and Security Studies, told Reuters.

"Pakistan can't get very perturbed about it because they know the facts of life, which India has made clear. They know on the ground what we are doing," he said.

Rather, fallout from the Washington Post articles settled on a less obvious target -- Indo-U.S. relations.

Indian officials and analysts said they were convinced the revelations about the Prithvi were part of a broader U.S. effort, resented in New Delhi, to control missile and nuclear weapons technology in South Asia.

"The timing of the report was very important," said Savita Pande of the government-supported Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. "It is a desperate attempt to put non-proliferation on the agenda of Indo-Pakistan talks."

India informed the United States several months ago that the army had moved some Prithvi missiles to Jullundur in Punjab state, sources familiar with the decision said.

The new-generation missiles have been stored, but not deployed, they said. Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral also has denied the missiles had been deployed but made no comment on whether they had been moved.

"The missiles were moved to Jullundur more than three months ago," one diplomatic source said. "The United States was notified that they were in storage. Thus Pakistan, too, would know. There was no need for this story unless there were other motivations." What could those "motivations" have been?

The leading theory in New Delhi was that a segment of the U.S. administration wanted the news to reach the public to push the issue of missile proliferation to the forefront.

"It was a calculated leak to thrust non-proliferation on to the agenda of Indo-Pakistan talks," Nair said.

"The U.S. government has not given up its central concerns of nuclear proliferation and missiles on the subcontinent," the diplomatic source said.

Indian officials and Western diplomats said "missile fundamentalists" in the United States -- those most committed to controlling the spread of sophisticated missile technology -- may ultimately have been aiming at China.

They may have reckoned that Pakistan, confronted with public revelations that India had stored Prithvis near the border, might acknowledge it had its own Chinese-made M-11 missiles.

Indian officials say they have evidence that Pakistan has deployed M-11s in its Punjab province, but Pakistan denies it and China says it has transferred no such technology.

India's frustration over the series of Washington Post articles finally spilled over at the weekend after the daily reported U.S. intelligence had informed Gujral about the movement of the missiles, prompting his vow they would not be deployed.

The Foreign Ministry labeled the report "false, mischievous and motivated", saying it had been planted to create confusion.

Junior Foreign Minister Saleem Shervani, appointed to the post only last week, was to head to the United States this week to help smooth relations.

One Indian official noted that day-to-day bilateral ties had for a year been entrusted to civil servants. "We want to elevate the dialogue to the political level," he said.