PREYING MANTIS? NEW DELHI WEIGHS IN ON SAO DELAYS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 NEW DELHI 000531 SENSITIVE SIPDIS DEPT FOR CA/VO/L/C, CA/P, L, ISN/CB, SCA/INS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: CMGT CVIS ECON PREL BEXP TSPA IN SUBJECT: PREYING MANTIS? NEW DELHI WEIGHS IN ON SAO DELAYS REF: A. BEIJING 687 ¶B. MOSCOW 578 NEW DELHI 00000531 001.2 OF 004 ¶1. (U) This is an action request for the Department; see paragraph 13 ¶2. (SBU) Summary: This cable joins those of Missions Beijing (ref A),Moscow (ref B) and others to emphasize the serious burden the Visas Mantis Security Advisory Opinion (SAO) processing system has imposed on American businesses and USG invitees. The SAO's lengthy processing is not only a major irritant to bilateral cooperation in key areas such as science, space, bio and information technology, and intellectual property rights, but has in many cases seriously compromised U.S. competitiveness in these fields. Processing delays have forced the rescheduling, postponement and even cancellation of a variety of USG programs and business ventures with Indian national participation. Indian business people, government officials, as well as experts and academics from a variety of fields are increasingly reluctant to commit to USG programs as a result of these delays. In some extreme cases, Indo-American business partnerships have opted to convene in third country locations, rather than risk Mantis-induced cancellations. Some in the Indian community feel so aggrieved about the delays of "administrative processing," that they have created a Facebook group to discuss and protest their treatment. Mission India recognizes the importance to national security protection that the Mantis system provides, but strongly recommends that immediate and defined measures be taken to streamline and expedite the process to avoid unnecessary and costly delays. Of the 1100 pending Mantis cases at Embassy New Delhi, 400 are more than two-months-old. We support a target for SAO processing within a fixed, reasonable amount of time and a strategic review of the entire Mantis program. End Summary Considerable Costs to American Defense Firms ¶3. (SBU) A major American defense firm operating in India relayed its experiences with SAO processing to Post. Earlier this year, the firm needed an electronics expert from the Bharat Electronics Company (BEC) to visit its facilities in California to help with its Anti-Submarine Warfare program. Given the sensitive nature of his work, the BEC employee was subject to Matis processing. By the time processing was complete, the team project was over. Our contact at the firm explained to us that seventy-five percent of the firm's business is done overseas. India is a particularly promising export market because, in spite of the global financial crisis, the Indian economy continues to grow and the Government has not cut back on defense spending. Our contact estimated that with no-cost, no-commitment demos taking place later this year, deals worth over $500 million were at stake. ¶4. (SBU) At the end of 2008, another US defense firm and the Indian state-owned company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited NEW DELHI 00000531 002.2 OF 004 (HAL) signed an MOA for the cooperative development of an F-16 refueling probe (to meet the offset requirement under a more than $10 billion dollar Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft Request for Proposals (MMRCA RFP) that India has tendered internationally. The project was set to begin in July 2008 with an orientation meeting to be held in Texas. The US company issued letters of invitation in May 2008 which clearly stated the connection between the visit and the Foreign Military Sales case. Moreover, the visit was being conducted in accordance with a Department of State-approved TAA authorization. Nevertheless, the visas were not approved until late August 2008, and as a result, many of the HAL personnel who were needed at the orientation were unable to attend. U.S. defense contractors are competing with European and Russian firms to win the MMRCA and the inability to plan interactions with Indian partners creates serious competitive hurdles for US companies bidding on the largest and most important defense tender ever by the Indian Government. It also undermines a major US strategic priority to strengthen the US-India defense relationship. USG Programs Affected ¶5. (SBU) U.S. Department of Agriculture colleagues had to cancel an important Borlaug Fellowship Program (academic exchanges between US and Indian universities on agricultural research) earlier this year because of processing delays. The Indian researcher, a specialist in Avian Influenza, was set to travel to the U.S. to consult with universities and research scientists. The applicant was unable to get his visa processed in a timely fashion. His program had to be postponed and relocated to an alternative venue. USDA was forced to work with the host university to recover its lost expenses and laboratory time. Given that collaborative work on pandemic flu prevention is a high USG priority, this visa issue was detrimental to our goal of developing cooperative working relationships with Indian counterparts. ¶6. (SBU) USAID had to cancel an entire regulatory training program (set to be undertaken with USDA in the U.S.) when a number of Indian biotechnology experts did not receive their visas at the end of the summer 2008. As an agricultural program, the training was subject to a strict timetable set by crop cycles. The delay caused the stage of crop production under study to be missed, rendering the training useless and the entire program unworkable. ¶7. (SBU) NIH has collected numerous examples of Indian scientists missing critically important international meetings and specific project deadlines due to visa processing-related delays. There is research on certain diseases done nowhere else in the world, and Indian interaction with their U.S. scientist colleagues is critical to progress in health protection against these dreaded diseases. Yet, significant personnel time and taxpayer dollars are wasted in rescheduling meetings and redoing travel arrangements. In one example, GOI employee Dr. Alka Sharma was invited to visit the NIAID Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases to initiate the NEW DELHI 00000531 003.2 OF 004 development of long-term collaboration in the area of vaccine development. She had meetings planned with more than 15 different experts at several U.S. sites in September 2008. After receiving the visa in November, a reconfigured schedule led to a much-reduced opportunity to interact with busy colleagues in the United States. ¶8. (SBU) The Department of Commerce, with funding from USTDA, invited a number of Indian patent examiners to review patent systems for biotechnology. Delays due to administrative processing time prevented their participation in this program designed to increase intellectual property protection (IPR) for US products in India and strengthen US-India cooperation on IPR protection. ¶9. (SBU) The Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum, founded in March 2000 with a USD 7 million endowment from the USG, is designed to promote collaborative research and activities to the benefit of both the United States and India. Since its inception, the Forum has funded 96 events, 92 of which were held in India. The Forum's Executive Director, Dr. Arabinda Mitra, informed EmbOffs that the reason for this disparity was because it was simply too hard for Indian scientists to get U.S. visas and that the Forum had simply given up trying. This has resulted in a serious imbalance in Forum activities which are now heavily skewed towards Indian programs - much to the detriment of U.S. interests and despite the investment of U.S. taxpayer funds. Other Stories ¶10. (SBU) Dr. Nanjan Sugumaran, Director of Projects at Artheon Energy Private Limited, applied for a visa in November 2008. Upon being told that his case had been referred for administrative processing, he provided the requested additional material to the Consular Section in December 2008. Dr. Sugumaran wanted to travel to the U.S. to meet with Northstar Battery, a U.S. firm. The business deal involves Northstar investing several million dollars to expand an existing Artheon plant in Nashik, Maharashtra; the plant manufactures batteries for use in telecommunications, solar lanterns, and electric bicycles. Once the plant expansion is completed, an estimated 75 percent of its sales will be in India and 25 percent will be in the U.S. Dr. Sugumaran commented that all that is required for the deal to conclude is his visit. Processing has delayed the business transaction by an estimated three months. 11, (SBU) A post-doc scholar at Stanford University applied for a visa on January 5. His supervisor, a Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford, stated "This substantial delay in processing of his visa has resulted in financial loss running in thousands of dollars for my laboratory. We had to cancel or reschedule complex experiments planned well in advance of his return on 11 January 2009. This has resulted in wastage of several expensive reagents and animals used in research. This financial loss is paralleled only by the loss of precious time, which is so critical to the laborious and time consuming neurodevelopment research we NEW DELHI 00000531 004.2 OF 004 conduct in my lab. Our research requires advanced planning and this delay, in effect, has set back research and grant applications by about 5 months." Frustrated Scientists Take Online Action ¶12. (SBU) In an act of protest, a group of Indian scientists, scholars and engineers currently experiencing SAO-related visa delays, have formed an online petition through the social networking site facebook.com to voice their grievances. Organized under the facebook.com "U.S. Visa Delays Awareness Group," the assembly of scientists argues that the majority of their signatories are U.S. educated, U.S. tax-paying scientists, but are unable to return to the U.S. to continue their work, and in some cases, reunite with their families. The site can be viewed at http://www.facebook.com/board.php?uid=5093333 5266 Many of these stories involve those who have gone to school in the U.S. and have already spent 5-10 years there. They and their families are well-established, and find their lives disrupted when a short return visit to India turned into a three-month stay with work going undone and kids out-of-school. Many of these individuals contribute to the United States' competitiveness in high technology and science and would prefer to continue their work there - rather than Europe or Canada. ¶13. (SBU) Comment and action request: We second Embassy Moscow's well articulated concerns that a drifting wait time is a significant issue affecting Mantis cases. As they note, few organizations (including the USG) can plan complete travel schedules three-four months out. For those businesses and government agencies that do put together a program, it is a terrible blow to find that those who were willing to adjust their planning and commit to a two-month wait are now looking at three months or more. While the first and most critical step must be to rationalize the Mantis clearance procedure to reduce the wait time to a reasonable and predictable level, Mission India strongly urges that the entire Mantis program be revamped. Because the underlying value of the program is being vastly overshadowed by the damage to U.S. commercial, scientific, and other interests, we request that the Department encourage an interagency review of the Mantis regulations. This review should look at less disruptive and more cost effective ways to achieve the same important goals that the Mantis program was designed to achieve. End Comment. WHITE