Hillary Clinton visit India, Bangladesh with modest agenda
Hopes were high after Congress passed a U.S.-India civilian nuclear
agreement in 2008 that the two countries would forge a close military
and strategic partnership.
But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton's three-day trip to India, starting Sunday after a weekend stop
in Bangladesh, comes amid reduced expectations and political distraction
on both sides and a relationship increasingly marked by incremental
movement on a variety of issues.Though India remains an important ally, few big-ticket nuclear and
defense deals that the United States had hoped for have materialized.
India is wary of becoming too closely aligned with the U.S. to the
detriment of its relations with Russia and Iran. And politics, including
the U.S. presidential campaign and the growing weakness of India's
Congress Party-led government, has limited the scope of agreements."There's a broad consensus that India-U.S. relations are still in a
state of drift," said Dhruva Jaishankar, Asia program officer with
Washington's German Marshall Fund of the United States. "The two
countries are talking more about more issues than any time in the past.
That said, there's no room in either capital for anything very
ambitious."
China, which Clinton has been visiting this week, is
expected to be a key topic of discussion when she meets with Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, starting
Monday, analysts said. In April, India test-fired a long-range missile
capable of hitting Beijing.
Afghanistan will also be high on the
agenda, analysts said, as U.S.-led NATO forces prepare to hand over
security to their Afghan counterparts by the end of 2014, altering the
regional power balance.
Washington is now more inclined to
welcome Indian aid, trade and training for Afghanistan after worrying
about ruffling Pakistan's feathers. "It was quite idiotic, the U.S.
reluctance to let us get involved," said K. Shankar Bajpai, former
ambassador to China, Pakistan and the U.S. and now an analyst with the
Delhi Policy Group think tank. "It's only natural we'd want good
relations with Afghanistan."
Indian officials are likely to push
for greater access to U.S. technology, analysts said, and to seek
assurances that their regional interests will be protected under a new
U.S.-Afghan partnership agreement. The U.S. is looking for progress on a
variety of commercial issues, including access to India's retail and
financial markets, and assurances that India will reduce its links with
Iran and Syria.
"Both sides are doing many things , and doing
them right," said Ashley J. Tellis, senior associate at Washington's
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "But these are often not the
sexy things, so they get taken for granted."
Between stops in
China and India, Clinton will spend Saturday night in Bangladesh, the
first visit to that country by a senior U.S. official in 12 years. She's
expected to meet in Dhaka, the capital, with Prime Minister Sheik
Hasina Wajed, among others, and discuss terrorism, security, energy, aid
and technology transfers.
Clinton's visit will follow several
days of strikes and violence in Bangladesh after the disappearance of a
senior opposition figure. It also comes as the government juggles
relations with India, China, Russia and a new Myanmar.
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