WASHINGTON, April 17: The US decision to announce granting of non-NATO status to Pakistan without informing India was intended to convey a message to both the nations that Washington wants to deal with them individually, diplomatic observers told Dawn on Saturday.

The message was further augmented this week by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who refused to assess the Pentagon's ties with India and Pakistan other than that relations with both the neighbours had improved.

Recently, several senior US officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Congressional hearings in Washington that since 9-11, the Bush administration is strongly following its policy of maintaining good ties with South Asia's two nuclear rivals.

It was Mr Powell who disclosed the US intention to make Pakistan a major non-NATO ally at a news conference in Islamabad late last month. And he was in India a day before the announcement but did not share his plan with Indian officials.

The move surprised diplomatic observers in Washington and some interpreted it as a mistake or an oversight. But one such observer, Dennis Kux, a former State Department official and a top expert on South Asia, said Mr Powell was "a very nimble diplomat" and he did not expect him to make such mistakes.

Mr Powell's failure to forewarn India, however, caused an angry reaction in New Delhi particularly because India sees the United States as a strategic partner and expects to be consulted on every major US move concerning South Asia.

But some diplomatic observers say this exactly is what the United States does not want to do.

"We cannot speculate on Mr Powell's intention but the message from Washington is clear: India and Pakistan should stop worrying about each other's relations with the United States," says Pakistan's deputy chief of mission, Mohammed Sadiq.

Agrees William Milam, a former US ambassador to Pakistan. "We are trying to pursue relations with both countries on equal basis. It is not a zero-sum relationship. We are not doing something for India that would reduce our relations with Pakistan and vice versa."

Mr Sadiq says that Pakistan already realizes this and that's why when the United States signed a strategic partnership with India last year, Pakistan showed no public reaction.

"But when Mr Powell announced the plan to make Pakistan a major non-NATO, the entire Indian lobby became active, which was unnecessary," said Mr Sadiq.

Mr Rumsfeld was more careful when asked how India would rank in the relationship between the United States and the South Asian neighbours, especially, after Washington's decision to grant an elite military status to Pakistan.

"We value our relationship with each country," Mr Rumsfeld said Thursday.

"They're different countries and our relationships are slightly different.

"But I think trying to grade them in some way wouldn't be useful," he added. Mr Rumsfeld said the United States had an "increasingly close relationship" with India and Pakistan and was "extremely pleased" they had moved toward reducing tensions that have existed for decades.

But he then added that there was also an increase in closeness in the "military-to-military and defence-to-defence relationship" with each of those countries.

"And in each case, we value them," he stressed. Diplomatic observers in Washington said that Bush administration has moved increasingly close to New Delhi since the late 1990s but has had to balance the shift with its renewed alliance with Pakistan in the war on terrorism.