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Indian PM to meet Obama today to get drift of Indo-US ties
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will get a first-hand sense of where President Barack Obama is taking the US-India relationship and his road map for the AfPak region when he meets the American President here on Sunday ahead of the Nuclear Security Summit hosted by Washington starting Monday.
Singh is scheduled to be Obamas first bilateral meeting (at 1.45 p.m.) on a day the US President typically likes to reserve for his young family and an occasional appearance at a church. The engagement is followed by Obamas meetings with the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazabayev (3.00 p.m.), South Africas Jacob Zuma (4.00 p.m.), Pakistans Yousef Raza Gilani (5 p.m.) and Nigerias Goodluck Johnson (5.45 p.m.).
The bilats with two ''new'' nuclear powers and two countries which voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons programme underlines Obamas pursuit of greater nuclear security through a summit meeting that has been elevated by his pro-active approach to nuclear weapons reduction but undermined by the decision of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahi not to attend.
Yet the White House has high expectations from the two-day Summit which, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will be the largest assembly of world leaders hosted by an American President since the 1945 San Francisco conference which founded the UN.
"We are trying to make this Summit the beginning of sustained international effort to lock down the world's vulnerable nuclear materials within four years and reduce the possibility that these materials will find their way into the hands of terrorists," Clinton said in a preview of the meet she gave in a speech at the University of Louisville, Kentucky on Friday.
Singh, who arrives in Washington D.C. on Saturday night, is also scheduled to have a bilateral meeting with Nazabayev on Sunday. No bilateral meetings are scheduled with Pakistans Gilani although the two will inevitably cross paths during the summit, in part because they are also slated to meet at the Saarc meeting in Thimphu, Bhutan, later this month.
American and Indian officials have strenuously countered the growing chorus in the commentariat that there is a drift, if not a downslide, in US-India ties, but the two leaders will have an opportunity to can the chatter on Sunday in course of an open-ended meeting where nuclear safety is subsumed by larger security issues in the neighborhood. That the two sides are not on the same page on Afghanistan and are battling differences over access to Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley a.k.a. Daaod Gilani is no secret.
Ahead of the meeting the Indian side has let it be known that they consider Afghanistan within the sphere of their influence and will do what it takes preserve their equity there regardless of Pakistans complaint. New Delhi will also continue to press for access to Headley in face of Washingtons efforts to shield him from prosecution in the Mumbai massacre case. Ironically, the one area where the two sides have little difference is the nuclear field.
Singh is slated to make a statement on national action on nuclear security at the summit, and ahead of the meet, Indias Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao has thrashed out related issues at a meeting of sherpas presided over by Gary Samore, White House Coordinator for WMD Counter-Terrorism and Arms Control.
The sherpas meeting finalized documents for the summit and a text of the communique to be issued at the end of the meet that will enjoin countries to endorse a pledge to take steps both at national and international level to strengthen nuclear security and prevent terrorists and criminal groups from gaining access to atomic weapons.
Most of the messaging from the summit is directed at ''outlier'' states such as Iran and North Korea even as Washington continues to publicly gloss over the situation in Pakistan, the country widely seen as being most vulnerable to nuclear hi-jinks despite self-congratulatory certification from Islamabad and endorsement of that from Washington. Most analysts don't buy into it.
''Pakistan has taken serious measures to protect the crown jewels of its national security but it lives in a perilous time. If there is a nightmare nuclear security scenario in Pakistan today it is probably an inside the family job that ends up in a nuclear Armageddon in India,'' Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution scholar who helped frame the Obama administrations AfPak policy said in a preview of the summit, pointing to the familial ties between the Pakistani military and the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba responsible for the attack on Mumbai.
When President Obama meets again with Prime Minister Gilani at the nuclear summit he should press for Pakistan to break up the LeT for good ''even if it disrupts family harmony,'' Riedel advised. Even though it is Iran which is in the cross-hairs of the Washington establishment, the intersection of terrorism and nuclear vulnerability is unique to Pakistan.
Meanwhile, although the current administration is stacked with non-proliferation and arms control hardliners (Samore himself is a leading light) there is a sense of acceptance that Indias unique, exceptional status as a de factor nuclear power cannot be rolled back and New Delhi will adhere to the rules of the nuclear club as a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
So with that issue out of the way, the scheduled 45-minute Singh-Obama meeting, their first after a State dinner the US President hosted last winter, is expected to span regional and global security issues and a broader range of trade and economic issues.
An Obama directive issued last December to his administration mandarins to press for resolution of India-Pakistan issues caused a minor kerfuffle in the analysts community for its implied pressure on New Delhi to initiate talks, but Indian officials have been firm in responding that Singh has been ahead of the national mood in trying to forge peace with Islamabad.
If anything, they insist, Pakistan has been a dodgy respondent to international pressure to end its patronage of extremist groups, choosing to only selectively go after groups inimical to the state - something that Riedel and other regional experts keep pointing out.
PM to meet Obama today to get drift of Indo-US ties - The Times of India
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will get a first-hand sense of where President Barack Obama is taking the US-India relationship and his road map for the AfPak region when he meets the American President here on Sunday ahead of the Nuclear Security Summit hosted by Washington starting Monday.
Singh is scheduled to be Obamas first bilateral meeting (at 1.45 p.m.) on a day the US President typically likes to reserve for his young family and an occasional appearance at a church. The engagement is followed by Obamas meetings with the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazabayev (3.00 p.m.), South Africas Jacob Zuma (4.00 p.m.), Pakistans Yousef Raza Gilani (5 p.m.) and Nigerias Goodluck Johnson (5.45 p.m.).
The bilats with two ''new'' nuclear powers and two countries which voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons programme underlines Obamas pursuit of greater nuclear security through a summit meeting that has been elevated by his pro-active approach to nuclear weapons reduction but undermined by the decision of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahi not to attend.
Yet the White House has high expectations from the two-day Summit which, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will be the largest assembly of world leaders hosted by an American President since the 1945 San Francisco conference which founded the UN.
"We are trying to make this Summit the beginning of sustained international effort to lock down the world's vulnerable nuclear materials within four years and reduce the possibility that these materials will find their way into the hands of terrorists," Clinton said in a preview of the meet she gave in a speech at the University of Louisville, Kentucky on Friday.
Singh, who arrives in Washington D.C. on Saturday night, is also scheduled to have a bilateral meeting with Nazabayev on Sunday. No bilateral meetings are scheduled with Pakistans Gilani although the two will inevitably cross paths during the summit, in part because they are also slated to meet at the Saarc meeting in Thimphu, Bhutan, later this month.
American and Indian officials have strenuously countered the growing chorus in the commentariat that there is a drift, if not a downslide, in US-India ties, but the two leaders will have an opportunity to can the chatter on Sunday in course of an open-ended meeting where nuclear safety is subsumed by larger security issues in the neighborhood. That the two sides are not on the same page on Afghanistan and are battling differences over access to Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley a.k.a. Daaod Gilani is no secret.
Ahead of the meeting the Indian side has let it be known that they consider Afghanistan within the sphere of their influence and will do what it takes preserve their equity there regardless of Pakistans complaint. New Delhi will also continue to press for access to Headley in face of Washingtons efforts to shield him from prosecution in the Mumbai massacre case. Ironically, the one area where the two sides have little difference is the nuclear field.
Singh is slated to make a statement on national action on nuclear security at the summit, and ahead of the meet, Indias Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao has thrashed out related issues at a meeting of sherpas presided over by Gary Samore, White House Coordinator for WMD Counter-Terrorism and Arms Control.
The sherpas meeting finalized documents for the summit and a text of the communique to be issued at the end of the meet that will enjoin countries to endorse a pledge to take steps both at national and international level to strengthen nuclear security and prevent terrorists and criminal groups from gaining access to atomic weapons.
Most of the messaging from the summit is directed at ''outlier'' states such as Iran and North Korea even as Washington continues to publicly gloss over the situation in Pakistan, the country widely seen as being most vulnerable to nuclear hi-jinks despite self-congratulatory certification from Islamabad and endorsement of that from Washington. Most analysts don't buy into it.
''Pakistan has taken serious measures to protect the crown jewels of its national security but it lives in a perilous time. If there is a nightmare nuclear security scenario in Pakistan today it is probably an inside the family job that ends up in a nuclear Armageddon in India,'' Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution scholar who helped frame the Obama administrations AfPak policy said in a preview of the summit, pointing to the familial ties between the Pakistani military and the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba responsible for the attack on Mumbai.
When President Obama meets again with Prime Minister Gilani at the nuclear summit he should press for Pakistan to break up the LeT for good ''even if it disrupts family harmony,'' Riedel advised. Even though it is Iran which is in the cross-hairs of the Washington establishment, the intersection of terrorism and nuclear vulnerability is unique to Pakistan.
Meanwhile, although the current administration is stacked with non-proliferation and arms control hardliners (Samore himself is a leading light) there is a sense of acceptance that Indias unique, exceptional status as a de factor nuclear power cannot be rolled back and New Delhi will adhere to the rules of the nuclear club as a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
So with that issue out of the way, the scheduled 45-minute Singh-Obama meeting, their first after a State dinner the US President hosted last winter, is expected to span regional and global security issues and a broader range of trade and economic issues.
An Obama directive issued last December to his administration mandarins to press for resolution of India-Pakistan issues caused a minor kerfuffle in the analysts community for its implied pressure on New Delhi to initiate talks, but Indian officials have been firm in responding that Singh has been ahead of the national mood in trying to forge peace with Islamabad.
If anything, they insist, Pakistan has been a dodgy respondent to international pressure to end its patronage of extremist groups, choosing to only selectively go after groups inimical to the state - something that Riedel and other regional experts keep pointing out.
PM to meet Obama today to get drift of Indo-US ties - The Times of India
