A high-powered team led by Robin Raphel, US assistant secretary of state in charge of South Asia in the Clinton administration, ended two days of discussions here yesterday with the foreign secretary, the defence secretary, the finance secretary and other senior Indian officials.
Sources in the external affairs ministry said there seemed a clear recognition on the part of US officials that India was making genuine moves towards her neighbours in the region amounting to leadership initiatives, and that Pakistan was slowly isolating itself in the process.
The bilateral talks, the officials said, were extremely warm and cordial, and both sides parted with the overwhelming impression that they could move beyond and despite the bump on the road.
We've had a spat (over the CTBT), but there is a clear intention on both parties that we do and can talk in a perfectly amicable fashion, the sources said.
Proof of this newfound desire on the part of both countries to do business as usual is the fact that an extradition treaty was finalised during Raphel's visit and will be signed within a month.
Finishing touches are being given to the treaty, which has been in the pipeline for the last two years. The treaty will be on the same lines as the one India has with Great Britain.
Significantly, too, Raphel did not raise a pet US initiative about regional security arrangements, an idea that has always been anathema to India.
On the other hand, the Indian officials said, she did bring up US concerns about India's nuclear policy, saying that Washington hoped that just because India did not sign the CTBT did not mean that there was any change in New Delhi's policy about conducting a nuclear test.
The Indian side told her that there was no reason to see that there was any change in New Delhi's stated stand.
On the agenda between Indian officials and Raphel's team were a wide range of issues, including life after the CTBT, elections in Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India's water-sharing dispute with Bangladesh and its relations with Nepal.
On each of these issues, Raphel openly recognised India's good neighbourly moves in the region and agreed with our feeling that Pakistan was groping for new policy, the sources said.
The Pakistanis, the officials, now quoting Raphel, added, seem to have missed the turn on the road, referring to Islamabad's policy in perpetuity of opposing elections in Kashmir.
Raphel is believed to have clearly recognised the fact that the government was holding assembly elections in Kashmir after almost a decade, and that this meant that the end of one phase and the beginning of another. It meant that the government of India would still have to talk with different sections of people in India's part of the Kashmir valley, but that Pakistan's contention that the Kashmir dispute extended to the entire state held no water.
Analysts described this as a significant step in the US appreciation of the complexities in the Kashmir tangle, especially since it was Raphel who in an off-the-record briefing with Indian journalists in Washington in 1993 had said that the US believed that the Instrument of Accession through which Kashmir acceded to India was not legal.
The CTBT took up a significant part of the bilateral talks, and both sides again reiterated that they would not let this affect the rest of the relationship and that there existed a need to contain emotions.
Afghanistan was the other subject of deep concern to both sides and they accepted the highly complex nature of the situation in that country. One official succintly summed up this part of the discussion : It was like five blind people feeling different parts of an elephant and coming to their own conclusions about the animal.
