11 April 2004	Sunday	20 Safar 1425

NEW DELHI, April 10: The main opposition Congress party, outlining its foreign policy before elections, on Saturday accused the government of making India "subordinate" to the United States and of flip-flopping on ties with Pakistan.

The Congress said that if voted to power in the parliamentary polls that begin on April 20 it would retain "freedom of options" in foreign relations and oppose sending Indian troops to Iraq.

"Sadly, a great country like India has been reduced to having a subordinate relationship with the United States where the US takes India for granted," a Congress vision statement said.

Releasing the platform, former junior foreign minister Natwar Singh said Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist-led government was "ready to send troops to Iraq" but that Congress scuttled the move in parliament.

The Vajpayee government points to the growing political and military relationship with the United States as a key achievement of its five-year tenure, but says it would only deploy troops to Iraq with a clear UN mandate.

Mr Singh, however, denied there was any "paradigm shift" in India-US relations and accused the government of "denting 50 years of consensus on foreign policy in India".

India, which was ruled by Congress for nearly 45 years, led the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War when it tilted towards the Soviet Union.

Mr Singh noted that US Secretary of State Colin Powell named India's rival Pakistan a major non-NATO ally during a visit to the subcontinent last month without first informing India.

"He (Powell) came, met the prime minister, the foreign minister but when he went to Pakistan he said Pakistan was being given MNNA status. At least, he could have informed us. And what did the government say? They said they are disappointed. At least they should have condemned this," Mr Singh said.

Congress said it would work for a "stable, working, cooperative" relationship with Pakistan, with which India resumed bilateral talks in February after a gap of more than two years. But Congress called the government's Pakistan policy "a saga of contradictions and confusion," accusing Vajpayee of changing his stance five times in five years.

"The government completely failed in containing and countering terrorism sponsored by Pakistan," the statement said.-AFP