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.