13 July 2004	Tuesday	24 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

NEW DELHI, July 12: India will play by the rule book with the United States when National Security Advisor Jyotindra Nath Dixit, and not the foreign minister, hosts US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage who begins a two-day visit from Tuesday.

Mr Dixit has the hierarchical level of minister of state, which is equal to the deputy secretary of state, although former foreign ministers Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha have played host to Mr Armitage.

Even as meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister Kunwar Natwar Singh have been lined up, the message is nevertheless clear. Being politely described as a break from tradition, the strict application of protocol for the powerful American trouble shooter is being interpreted in various ways, with one of them happening to involve Pakistan.

According to a dispatch from New York, the Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper says Mr Armitage would be getting New Delhi to put its cards on the table about its vision for the US-India relations.

Prime Minister Singh last week reiterated India's resolve against sending troops to Iraq. Washington wants this to change with the assumption of a new "sovereign" Iraqi government in Baghdad.

"In a message pregnant with implications for the United Progressive Alliance government's Iraq policy", The Telegraph said. It said the Bush administration has virtually scuttled at the eleventh hour the appointment of former foreign secretary Salman Haidar to the high-profile job of UN representative in Iraq.

Washington, according to the report, is pressing UN secretary- general Kofi Annan to choose Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, Pakistan's ambassador to the US, instead of Haidar for the sensitive assignment of leading the world body back into Baghdad.

The new government is also keen to exploit the embarrassing silence of the Vajpayee administration over the humiliation of former defence minister George Fernandes, who was strip-searched at the Dulles airport when he was on an official visit to Washington.

One newspaper quoted an unidentified official source as expressing his outrage over the manner in which Jaswant Singh would fly off to meet the then Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, his junior in protocol terms, "whenever Talbott phoned or sent a fax from Rome or Tokyo", which was "demeaning".

On the charitable side, the fact that Armitage is being hosted by Dixit suggests the Indian foreign ministry is not letting protocol come in the way of diplomacy. Strictly speaking, the visiting US deputy secretary of state's counterpart is either E. Ahmed or Rao Inderjit Singh, both ministers of state in the Ministry of External Affairs, The Times of India said.

The upright positions of the new Congress-led government on Iraq since assuming power have exasperated Washington, where officials make no secret of their displeasure over Foreign Minister Natwar Singh's firm refusal to endorse the Vajpayee government's position that India and the US are "natural allies".

Mr Singh said in Washington last month that "I don't think one should go as far as that", and warned against becoming "prisoners of cliches". The Telegraph said that the United States was expected to use both carrots and sticks.

One stick in the American quiver may be used against India any day and may come in the form of crippling anti-dumping duties on shrimp exported to the US. India supplies 12 per cent of shrimp imported into the US. India exported shrimp worth $400 million to the US in 2003.

An equally powerful stick that the US may wield is to go slow on high-technology trade with India, including the sale of dual civilian-military technology and goods, painstakingly worked out with the Vajpayee government. "If India accommodates the US, this stick may turn into a carrot and such sales may be speeded up," The Telegraph said.