SCENESETTER FOR INDIA VISIT OF NATIONAL SECURITY

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 NEW DELHI 001277

NOFORN
SIPDIS

NSC: DON CAMP AND ANISH GOEL

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/29/2029
TAGS: PREL PGOV IN
SUBJECT: SCENESETTER FOR INDIA VISIT OF NATIONAL SECURITY
ADVISOR JONES

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires, a.i., Peter Burleigh for Reasons 1.4
(B, D)


1. (SBU) General Jones: Embassy New Delhi warmly welcomes
you to India. Your visit comes on the heels of Under
Secretary Burns' successful trip to India and in the run-up
to a July visit by Secretary Clinton. You will be coming at
a time when U.S. officials can engage with a new, strong
Indian government freed from the constraints of anti-American
coalition partners or a precarious political position, with a
commitment to elevate the relationship. This is truly an
opportune moment in our bilateral history with this Asian
giant/strategic partner. Following the formation of new
governments in Washington and New Delhi, it will mark the
beginning of new era of engagement and discourse, ripe with
potential, between the oldest and largest democracies in the
world. Of course, the relationship is far from perfect, and
there still remains a noticeable undercurrent of public
skepticism regarding U.S. intentions in South Asia and India.
However, as the senior most official of the Obama
Administration to visit India and meet with the new Indian
government thus far, your visit provides an opportunity to
set a positive tone and further build on the groundwork
established by Under Secretary Burns' recent visit, to take
our partnership to the next level.


Elections: Congress Party Returns with Renewed Strength
--------------


2. (SBU) The surprisingly strong performance by the Congress
Party and its United Progressive Alliance allies in India's
national election has returned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
to office and provided the Congress Party with a mandate to
govern, after years of battling communists and regional
coalition "partners" over both domestic and foreign policy
issues, including a closer relationship with the United
States. This has allowed the Prime Minister to assemble what
some in the media have referred to as "Manmohan's dream team"
in his cabinet, including the addition of the new External
Affairs Minister, S.M. Krishna. Krishna is the first Indian
foreign minister to have received a degree from a U.S.
university (Southern Methodist University, along with a
Fulbright term at George Washington University). In his
first press interaction, he promised to consolidate India's
partnership with the U.S., along with other major powers like
Russia, China, Japan, and the EU. With the UPA's victory and
the return to the cabinet of key players such as MK Narayanan
as National Security Advisor, Pranab Mukherjee as Finance
Minister, P. Chidambaram as Home Minister, and AK Antony as
Defense Minister, we anticipate stability in our bilateral
relationship and a continuation of the positive trajectory
that has marked our ties for the past decade.


Burgeoning Global Power in an Unstable Region
--------------


3. (SBU) Although the Congress Party's overwhelming victory
in the elections convinced some pundits that the GOI was set
to move quickly and boldly on its foreign policy agenda,
serious challenges which predate the election remain as
sobering reminders of how far India has to go to reach its
stated goal of becoming a global player. One thing that
seems to never change is India's preoccupation with Pakistan,
and the Indians are following very closely how Islamabad
prosecutes the perpetrators of the Mumbai terrorist attacks
and acts (or doesn't act) against Lashkar-e-Taiba. A silver
lining to the Mumbai attacks was the subsequent unprecedented
law enforcement cooperation between the U.S. and India on the
investigation. Senior Indian officials have warned us not to
trust Pakistan's intentions in pursuing the Mumbai terror
networks. Pakistan's release of JuD Chief Hafiz Saeed has
only added to their suspicion. India has responded to every
Pakistani request for further evidence, fully cognizant of
how it is in India's interest not to appear to balk at such

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requests, but Foreign Minister Krishna made it clear in his
first days in office that India's policy remains that it will
not return to a formal Composite Dialogue with Pakistan until
Mumbai terrorists are prosecuted.


4. (SBU) This focus on Pakistan's efforts or lack thereof
against terrorists targeting India was reaffirmed during PM
Singh's June 16 one-on-one meeting with Pakistani President
Asif Zardari on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization summit in Russia. PM Singh opened by asserting
in the presence of the media that "the territory of Pakistan
must not be used for terrorism" against India. India's major
newspapers praised the meeting, commending the PM's decision
to engage Zardari while maintaining a tough stance toward
Pakistan. Singh and Zardari directed their respective
Foreign Secretaries to convene in the next few weeks, and the
two leaders agreed to meet again in July in Sharm-El-Sheikh
on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit.
Although some Pakistani officials characterized the meeting
in Russia as the resumption of the five-year-old formal
dialogue with Pakistan, Foreign Secretary Menon dismissed
suggestions that India gave in to pressure to start talks
despite the lack of concrete action against the perpetrators
of the Mumbai attacks, by stressing that there were no plans
to resume the Composite Dialogue process anytime soon.


5. (C) Despite early concerns, the GOI now appreciates
Special Representative Holbrooke's active outreach to India
on Afghanistan-Pakistan policy, and has agreed to contribute
more toward Afghan reconstruction. GOI officials will be very
interested in your thoughts after having visited Afghanistan
and Pakistan. However, despite our reassurances,
hypersensitivity remains in the general Indian public over
the question of whether the U.S. intends to interfere in
Kashmir and/or sacrifice Indian security interests to U.S.
objectives in Afghanistan. Indian officials emphatically
reject suggestions of a link between the problems on the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and the India-Pakistan
relationship, especially the dispute over Kashmir. Elsewhere
in the region, the U.S. and India generally share similar
goals for stability and democratic governance in places such
as Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, and have coordinated
better than in the past. Burma and Iran remain exceptions
largely because India's proximity, historical ties, and
economic interests leave it with a policy perspective that
more often than not diverges from ours. On the global stage,
we have heard Indian strategic thinkers tell us their goal is
for India to become "a regional power and global player."
The ambition at the top echelons of the government is readily
apparent, as India ardently pursues a permanent UNSC seat,
proudly takes a seat at the G-20 table, actively engages in
multilateral fora like the East Asia Summit and
Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC) Summit, modernizes its
military, and begins to seek greater security
responsibilities such as anti-piracy operations off Somalia.


6. (SBU) Still, the weight of domestic poverty coupled with,
as one senior GOI official admitted to us, a dearth of
capacity in the bureaucracy, has meant that capability has
not been able to match growing ambition, and by all
appearances won't for the next several years. (Note: While
India's poverty level has fallen in the past decade along
with a rapidly growing economy, over 800 million Indians
continue to subsist on less than two U.S. dollars a day. End
Note.) The good news for U.S. interests is that the same
senior officials who have a vision for India's ascendancy
generally recognize that healthy relations with the United
States are essential for India to get to where it wants to
be. The Congress Party attributes a large part of its
electoral success to the close attention it paid to the rural
sector of the economy. Over the past year, the UPA has
implemented a number of costly subsidy, debt waiver, and
rural income support programs that, along with good monsoons,
have led to relatively strong rural and agricultural growth.
Despite the anticipation of some "big bang" economic reforms,
the more likely approach by the new government is gradual

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reform with a close watch at each step on the political and
social effects of policy changes. The watchword, emphasized
by Finance Minister Mukherjee, will be rapid, "inclusive
growth" with spending and investment on infrastructure and an
expanding social safety net.

Growing Defense Relationship
--------------


7. (S/NF) The defense relationship is on a strong growth
curve despite a variety of frustrations. While the Indian
uniformed leadership of all three Services, and in particular
the Indian Navy, appreciate their improving ties with the
United States military, civilian bureaucrats in the
Ministries of External Affairs and Defense continue to
complicate attempts to improve the nascent strategic
partnership through bureaucratic inertia and recalcitrance.
Despite these frustrations, military-to-military contacts
continue to be a strong foundation of our strategic
partnership. We conducted the largest
ground-forces/counterterrorism centric combined exercise to
date in February 2009, implemented an Improvised Explosive
Devices/Bomb disposal Subject Matter Expert Exchange (SMEE)
event in January 2009, and held a China-threat SMEE in April

2009. India has already hosted visits from the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commander of United States
Pacific Command, and the Commandant of the United States
Coast Guard this year. We continue to seek opportunities for
capacity-building, greater access and improved partnering
through more-focused combined exercises, better-tailored
subject matter exchange events, and additional high-level
visitor exchanges.


8. (C) Defense sales have risen from near zero in 2004 to
over $2.2 billion already in 2009, with prospects for further
increases. Despite this potential, the sale of military
equipment and training through the Foreign Military Sales
(FMS) process has been halted pending agreement on End Use
Monitoring (EUM). At a time when our defense relationship is
otherwise beginning to flourish, the lack of an EUM agreement
has become an irritant. Should you have the opportunity, we
ask that you convey the message that EUM is a requirement of
U.S. law, has been accepted by over eighty other countries,
and will have to be accepted by India if it desires to
procure the state-of-the-art technology we are willing to
share with it.


Deliverables: Some Low-Hanging Fruit May Be Ripe for Picking
--------------


9. (SBU) One thrust of your visit will be to discuss the
institutionalized dialogues that will form the pillars for
our partnership in the coming years. During his visit, Under
Secretary Burns exchanged views with the Indians who are
undergoing a similar review, and we hope to have mutually
agreed architecture in place by the time Secretary Clinton
visits here in July. In addition to creating an architecture
that will help take the bilateral relationship to the next
level, there are other tangible issues ripe for resolving.


10. (SBU) Following the election, Post received clear signals
from contacts at the Ministry of External Affairs, the
Ministry of Defense, and through the media that India is
ready to move forward on a few agreements which have been
pending longer than anyone would have expected. Acceptable
End-Use Monitoring (EUM) language is at the top of that list,
and the Indians seem intent on finding a resolution that
meets India's political concerns and DoD's legal
requirements, perhaps as a deliverable for Secretary
Clinton's visit. Working-level contacts at MoD suggest that
the Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum
of Agreement (CISMOA) is also within reach, pending a review
by the Cabinet Committee on Security. A third agreement, the
Logistics Support Agreement, has also been brought up again
by MoD contacts. We recommend you push for approval of all

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three agreements (technically the EUM language is not a
"formal" agreement, but due to domestic political
sensitivities will require Cabinet approval) to be concluded
as early as possible, reiterating our points that these will
clear the way for even more robust defense cooperation,
something Prime Minister Singh has mentioned as a growth area
for the relationship.


11. (SBU) We also continue to clear away obstacles to
implementing the civil nuclear agreement. The Indian Cabinet
and Parliament need to approve liability legislation to
protect U.S. and other foreign companies, but once that is
enacted we are hoping to have an announcement -- again, at or
before the time of Secretary Clinton's visit -- of the
designation of two nuclear park sites for U.S. companies.


12. (SBU) We appear to have reached agreement on the way
forward for implementing a Technology Safeguards Agreement
(TSA) that would also launch what we hope are expedited
negotiations on a Commercial Space Launch Agreement (CSLA) as
well as discussions on our satellite services markets.
However, we are still awaiting approval by the GOI. Post
recommends you push to have these agreements concluded in
time to be included for signing during the Secretary's visit.


Counterterrorism Efforts
--------------


13. (SBU) Your visit immediately comes after the annual
bilateral Counterterrorism Joint Working Group (CTJWG)
meeting, which was held June 16 in Washington. There is
considerable interest among U.S. agencies in increased
cooperation in law enforcement training and financial
counterterrorism. We will also encourage India to play a
positive role in sub-regional cooperation efforts,
particularly on border issues with Nepal and Bangladesh.


Your Meetings
--------------


14. (SBU) All signs indicate National Security Advisor
Narayanan and the new Indian government are looking forward
to receiving you and discussing regional security issues.
Most of the senior officials we have requested should be
available to meet with you: Prime Minister Singh, Home
Affairs Minister P. Chidambaram, National Security Advisor
Narayanan, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon, and Leader
of the Opposition L.K. Advani. External Affairs Minister
Krishna will be out of the country when you visit.
BURLEIGH