December 8, 2001	Saturday	Ramazan 22, 1422

NEW DELHI: India and the US agreed to a series of steps towards forging a new relationship which would promote their “strategic interest in Asia and beyond.”

This follows discussions between the visiting US Under Secretary for Defence, Douglas Feith and the Indian Defence Secretary Yogendra Narain in a meeting of the Indo-US Defence Policy Group.

In a statement the two heads said, “the defence and security cooperation can promote freedom, global peace, economic progress and security.”

Talking to newsmen, Feith said the agreement would not only improve bilateral Indo-US relations but also “shape the decisions of other powers in the world to promote peace.”

To a question, Feith referred to the current flux in international relations and said that China like other major powers is in the process of “making important” decisions that would affect the strategic picture for decades.

This was the third attempt to give Indo-US cooperation a sense of purpose and direction which the earlier meetings had failed to deliver due to American concerns on proliferation. But this time such a concern was set aside.

Pointing out the consideration which went into the American decision to conclude the agreement, Feith said that America considered India to be a country which had “interests and capabilities not only in the region, but globally.”

Defining the framework of DPG, Director Policy and Planning of the US State Department Richard Haass, told a separate news conference that these had been identified by President Bush and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee during their meetings recently. These had been Afghanistan, counter-terrorism, defence, strategic framework, civilians in nuclear systems, aerospace, intelligence and economic cooperation.

On the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, Haass believed that it “is not good for the diplomatic prospects for both the countries as well as Pakistan”.

As a token of appreciation for the new-found format of cooperation, the US has invited India to the missile defence exercises and defence demonstrations being organized by the US military outfit as a part of its programme in its national missile defence strategy.

Others invited to this programme are the Republic of Korea, Russia and Japan besides the NATO countries. In addition to this, the US has also proposed a joint naval exercise which is to take place in a few weeks. These would be in continuation of the Malabar series of naval exercises which had been suspended soon after the Pokhran blasts.