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Pallone makes a move towards easing economic sanctions

Democrat Congressman Frank Pallone, who is co-chairman of congressional caucus on India and Indian-Americans, has called on congressional conferees to approve a measure, seeking to waive the economic sanctions that the United States had imposed on India after its May nuclear tests.

In a statement in Washington last night, he said he intended to write to a dear colleague a letter urging members of the House-Senate agriculture appropriation conference to approve the language in the Senate bill allowing President Clinton to waive the sanctions imposed after the nuclear tests.

He also said the congressional supporters of India won an important victory this week as Republican congressman Dan Burton did not introduce his amendment which sought to deny US humanitarian aid to India.

Pallone said he and his colleagues were prepared to fight, on a bipartisan basis, the annual efforts by Burton to cut aid to India as a punitive measure. Burton had supported three different amendments, limiting US aid to India. But, when the foreign operations bill came on the floor of the House on Thursday last for discussion, Burton did not seek recognition to offer his amendment.

Last year, a similar amendment was defeated by a vote of 82-342.

Since then, sanctions have been imposed on India because of the nuclear tests, with humanitarian aid exempted from the sanctions.

That means the only assistance programme left for Burton to go after were humanitarian programmes, such as child survival, family planning and health programme. Clearly, the effect of Burton's amendment would have been to punish India's poor without having any effect on Indian government policy, he added.

He said, furthermore, India and the US are in the midst of ''high-level talks to resolve many of the outstanding issues between our two countries, including nuclear proliferation''. At a time of significant progress, this would have been the worst time to go after India with a punitive gratuitous slap like this. In fact, there is a growing bipartisan consensus to allow President Clinton the authority to waive some of the sanctions.

UNI