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US Ready to End Sanctions on India
The Bush administration is moving on a broad front to strengthen relations with India, viewing it as a neglected and potentially important strategic ally and trading partner in Asia, the New York Times reported on Monday.
U.S. officials said the most dramatic step the administration would take is the almost certain lifting of American economic and military sanctions imposed on India in 1998 for its test of a nuclear weapon.
The Bush administration will ask Congress to lift the sanctions when it returns next month, senior administration officials said.
Some of the most senior legislators, including the chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, favor the move.
Biden said in an interview recently that he had sent a letter to Bush last week expressing his support and indication that the sanctions could be removed in time for a possible meeting between Bush and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, in New York in late September.
The officials said the president was also planning a visit to India early next year.
"The sanctions were symbolic as much as practical," the officials said. Lifting them now would remove a significant irritant to closer U.S. ties with India. But it would also signal that the United States had little choice but to accept that India had elbowed its way into the nuclear club.
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