Go beyond strategic ties with US: Talbott

Former US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott on Tuesday warned of excessive preoccupation on India's part to judge progress on Indo-US relations by the progress made on the strategic partnership agreements and said this could lead to disappointment and frustration as there were limits to what the US could do for India in this area.

"There is a fixation on the Indian side on the acronym NSSP (Next Steps in Strategic Partnership). But it would be wrong to judge the health of Indo-US relations exclusively on the basis of the how fast or slow the progress made on it was," he said in an interaction with Indian MPs and intellectuals here.

Stating that India was more enthusiastic on progress on the "Next Steps in Strategic Partnership" agreement signed between US President George Bush and then Prime Minister AB Vajpayee for increasing collaboration in the space technology and other fields, he said there was need to broaden the ambit of the dialogue.

Talbott, a former Bill Clinton administration official, who now heads the leading US think-tank, Brookings Institution, said focussing too much on the agreement could create a basis for disappointment and suspicion.

"As a member of the non-proliferation treaty club, Washington cannot do certain things that India would like it to do as part of the agreement," Talbott said.

Here to tie up with its Indian counterpart, the Observer Research Foundation, and also to release his book "Engaging India: Diplomacy, democracy and the bomb", Talbott, however, noted that Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh "have done a great deal" and were constantly working to improve the relations between the two countries.

He said the US policy on South Asia under an administration headed by Democrat John Kerry would not be very different from that of the Bush regime.

"And that would be a good thing as the relationship under both Clinton and Bush has improved," Talbott, who admits to being pro-Democrat, said.

He also sought to calm fears about anti-outsourcing measures under Kerry, who has vociferously opposed business process outsourcing in his election campaign, saying, "his government's attitude towards outsourcing would be different to his campaign."

To a question on whether his institution had any ideas to offer on the Kashmir issue, Talbott said: "The subject keeps coming up all the time in our work on South Asia. We are in touch with people in the government on the issue, including Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca. But there is no secret plan on how to solve the issue."

About the threat of nuclear terrorism vis-à-vis Pakistan, he said the US was alert on that front. A "quiet monitoring" was being done as Islamabad was cleaning up its act on nuclear proliferation.

In the over 120-minute-long discussion with Indian MPs, including Rajeev Shukla, MS Gill and Nikhil Kumar, and eminent personalities such as senior academic Arjun Sengupta, former foreign secretary ML Rasgotra, former Chiefs of Army Staff Shankar Roy Chowdhury and VP Mallik, Talbott noted that India, like the US, was a "successful country" as it was based on the good idea of "secular, pluralist and inclusive democracy."

India expert Steve Cohen, who heads the Centre for Foreign Policy and is accompanying Talbott on the India visit, said there was "chronic underfunding" of Indo-US exchange studies.

"Our particular concern is that researchers have lost interest in contemporary India, as a result of which the image of India is stuck in the past. It is crucial that these studies are funded," Cohen said.