'New era' on defense for India and U.S. By Amelia Gentleman International Herald Tribune
THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 2005 NEW DELHI A 10-year military agreement just signed by the defense secretaries of the United States and India is intended to provide for numerous advances in the relationship, including joint weapons production, greater sharing of technology and intelligence as well as an increased trade in arms.
A statement signed by India's defense minister, Pranab Mukherjee, and the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in Washington on Tuesday night said that the United States and India had "entered a new era" and declared that the two countries' defense relationship had advanced to "unprecedented levels of cooperation."
Ten years after India and the United States signed their previous agreement on defense, and seven years after Washington broke military relations after India's first nuclear tests, the new framework upgraded the agreement between "the world's two largest democracies" from a "defense relationship" to a "strategic partnership" that is intended to strengthen "our countries' security" and "build greater understanding between our defense establishments," according to the document.
The agreement was greeted with mixed reviews in New Delhi. Some analysts interpreted it as a significant manifestation of Washington's recently stated commitment to help India transform itself into world power in the 21st century.
Raja Mohan, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi specializing in relations between the United States and India, described the agreement as a "huge step forward."
"There has been a lot of skepticism about America's intentions, but this lays out a fully fledged framework for the next decade," he said. "It's a serious document."
But others were more doubtful, asserting that the agreement had more to do with U.S. strategic concerns than with a single-minded desire to engage with India.
Many of these analysts interpret the recent U.S. courtship of India as part of a wider goal of containing the growing power and influence of India's Asian rival, China.
Lalit Mansingh, India's foreign secretary between 1999 and 2001 who subsequently served as ambassador to the Washington until 2004, agreed that this was a significant agreement. "We have much greater shared interests than we did 10 years ago, and we are talking now about co-production of arms," he said. "This is quite clearly a new step towards strategic partnership."
However, he also sensed a shadow of shared U.S. and Indian unease over China lingering over the document, which he said would be the subject of close scrutiny in Beijing. "China is like the ghost at the banquet - an unspoken presence that no one wants to talk about," Mansingh said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/29/news/india.php