India warns US of arms sale to Pak

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the first high-ranking member of the second George W Bush administration to visit India, today received a cool welcome in New Delhi.

India brought up the issue of the US promise to supply advanced F16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan, as hours before Rumsfeld arrived, Foreign Minister K Natwar Singh told the Lok Sabha that "we have cautioned the US against such a decision".

"We have also conveyed that American arms supply to Pakistan would have a negative impact on the goodwill the US enjoys in India, particularly as a sister democracy," Singh said. New Delhi has pointed out that the supply of arms to Pakistan by the US at a time when the dialogue between the two countries is at a "sensitive stage" would have a "negative impact".

This issue is likley to be brought up at Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee's meeting with the US defence secretary tomorrow morning.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, who was in Washington earlier this week on his way back from a visit to Latin America, had raised the issue of the US promise to provide Pakistan with aircraft that Washington had promised to sell to Islamabad but was prevented from doing so by the Pressler and later the Brown amendments.

Pakistan was in the piquant position of having paid an advance for aircraft it never received and instead paid millions of dollars for not taking delivery of them.

On the agenda was also the issue of the reported US decision to sell Orion P3C surveillance aircraft to Pakistan.

The US Defence Security Cooperation Agency had notified the Congress of a "possible foreign military sale to Pakistan" of eight P3C Orion aircraft with T-56 engines as well as associated equipment and services some months ago, while visiting director for south Asia for the Defence Security Cooperation Agency Ed Ross had told India earlier in the year that the US was keen to sell the P3C Orion aircraft to the Indian Navy.

Top defence ministry sources told Business Standard that Rumsfeld would also discuss the US perspectives on the internal situation in Iraq and Afghanistan and on deepening Indo-US military cooperation.

Mukherjee, sources said, has been invited to visit Pentagon and the trip could take place in February or March next year.