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Naresh Chandra meets Pickering in Washington, pushes Indian moratorium

India's ambassador to the US, Naresh Chandra, has met a senior State Department official after New Delhi's declaration of a moratorium on nuclear tests in an apparent effort to prepare the ground for negotiations between the two countries.

Neither the Indian embassy nor the State Department offered any comment on Chandra's meeting with under secretary of state for political affairs, Thomas Pickering in Washington on Thursday. But, according to informed sources, he had brought to the notice of the department, New Delhi's latest stance on the nuclear issue.

To drive their point home, sources drew attention to the timing of the Chandra-Pickering meeting which took place after Brijesh Mishra, principal secretary to Prime Minister A B Vajpayee had announced in New Delhi earlier in the day the government's readiness for talks with world powers to formalise a new moratorium on nuclear tests. ''For that, we need to have talks with key interlocutors. We are ready for the talks,'' Mishra said.

Chandra, who called on Pickering yesterday, had met deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs Gib Lampher on Wednesday in the absence of assistant secretary Karl Inderfurth who was out on assignment.

A department official said the US had advised India to exercise restraint at this juncture and tone down its anti-Pakistan rhetoric to avoid any escalation of tension in the region. Apparently, he was referring to the recent strong statements of Home Minister L K Advani on the Kashmir issue.

Earlier, President Bill Clinton held discussions with his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin to impress upon India the necessity of signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty after having tested its five nuclear devices last week.

White House spokesman Mike McCurry, who gave this information, said the president spoke to Yeltsin on phone yesterday as part of his efforts to mobilise international support for limiting tension on the Indian subcontinent arising from the nuclear tests.

During the conversation, which lasted for about 15 minutes, they exchanged views on the situation in India and Pakistan and ways to dissuade Islamabad from going ahead with a nuclear test of its own to level up with India's.

''They discussed ways in which we might continue to impress upon the Government of Pakistan the importance of not testing (a nuclear device) and continue to deal with ways in which we might encourage the Government of India to think very seriously about its international obligations and the utility of things like the CTBT as a way of dealing with the development of a future course of action,'' he added.

"The president continues to be directly engaged in conversations that help build international support for limiting tensions on the Indian subcontinent,'' McCurry added.

Asked whether this was the sole object of President Clinton's call to Yeltsin, he said it was intended to follow up on the meeting that they had last week in Britain where they had gone to attend the summit of the Group of Eight industrialised nations.

He said they also discussed one or two other regional issues the details of which he did not provide.

Asked as to how the US maintained its contact with India in the absence of its ambassador in New Delhi, he said, ''Well, through the embassy in New Delhi, we do have channels of communication available to senior leadership in that government. So, we do have a way to talk to them and we, of course, have the embassy here.''

UNI

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