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Yearender: 2000 -- India's Diplomatic Year
The year of 2000 marked a remarkable year for India's diplomacy as world leaders such as US President Bill Clinton, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Russian President Vladimir Putin came here one after another.
Perhaps the single most important achievement of the first year in office of the re-elected government of Atal Behari Vajpayee was the rapprochement with the United States. President Bill Clinton's state visit to India in March, the first U.S. presidential visit to India in 22 years, reciprocated by Vajpayee's U.S. trip in September, ending the cold war in South Asia.
The document "India-U.S. Relations: A Vision for the 21st century" signed by Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Clinton during the U.S. leader's stay here, turned a new chapter in the history of Indo-U.S. relations.
The United States considers that a meaningful engagement with India will ensure that Indo-Pak tensions on Kashmir and other related issues do not generate into a nuclear confrontation, some analysts say.
The United States is equally interested in preventing the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Asian region, which would disturb the post Cold War military and strategic balance.
It is the assessment of the United States that expanding economic and technological relations with India, which is the second largest country in Asia and which is also one of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world, will be benefit to the United States and it will also serve India's development interest.
Washington's "tilt" towards New Delhi, as the Indian government sees it, now removes the obstacles for India to be accepted internationally as an Asian power and eventually to be accepted as a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations.
In furtherance of this aim, India has sought to reassure the United States and its allies that it will stick to its voluntary moratorium on further nuclear testing. "India understands your concerns," Vajpayee told the U.S. Congress in September, "we do not wish to unravel your non-proliferation efforts."
But the Indian government is still unlikely to take the domestic political risk of signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) until Washington overturns the U.S. Senate's rejection of the treaty.
The year also marked the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and China, with President K. R. Narayanan's successful week-long state visit to China, which has injected fresh vitality into Sino-Indian relations in the new millennium.
In August, India and Japan launched a wide-range partnership, putting behind strains caused by New Delhi's nuclear tests two years ago and stepping into a security dialogue and closeness fostered by technology.
...a closeness fostered by technology.
During his official visit to India, Japanese Prime Minister Mori declared: "Japan and India have become global partners." Officials from both sides said their countries would have regular dialogue on economic, regional and international issues as part of a broad new range of contacts.
The two Asian nations want to develop close links in information technology, in which Japan needs India's vast pool of professionals, and have a shared interests in joining an expanded UN Security Council as permanent members.
Another important event in the year was Russian President Vladimir Putin's three-day state visit here in October, which ushered in a new phase in relations between the former Cold War allies and revived a relationship that had somewhat wilted since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
During Putin's visit, the first by a Russian leader for eight years, the two sides signed a new "strategic partnership" for the 21st century as well as a raft of other accords and multi-million dollar arms contracts.
"Despite the change in the global political situation, the importance of ties between India and Russia in the military and political field is growing," Putin told reporters before leaving for Moscow.
He noted, "we hope after this political impetus that India and Russia together can develop their relationship even further, make it even more dynamic than it has been in the previous century."
However, the relations between India and Pakistan is still in a dead lock after the military government came to power in October 1999. India has repeatedly rejected Pakistan's offer for resumption of peace talks between the two countries.
Instead, India has urged Pakistan to create conductive conditions for resumption of the stalled bilateral dialogue through cessation of cross-border terrorism and hostile propaganda against it.
Prime Minister Vajpayee Wednesday announced in Parliament extension of the Ramadan ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir by another month and said his government would initiate such exploratory steps it considers necessary, "so that the composite dialogue process between the governments of India and Pakistan could be resumed."
In a limited reciprocation, Pakistan ordered a partial withdrawal of its troops from the Line of Control.
A leading Indian newspaper "Hindu" said Thursday in its editorial, "Mr. Vajpayee's declared commitment as the initiator of the dialogue process with Pakistan marks a distinct and salutary attitudinal shift, which if sustained and pursued in all seriousness, could well make for a breakthrough."
"At this stage, however, optimism has to be tempered with caution," it added.
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