NEWS ANALYSIS : Naval Exercise Shows New Indo-U.S. Cooperation : Defense: But a missile test could chill New Delhi’s emerging friendship with Washington.

Just after sunrise Friday, as the Indian and U.S. navies staged their first joint military exercises in the Arabian Sea off India’s western coast, Indian rocket scientists on the east coast conducted an exercise of a far different sort--the successful test of a ballistic missile capable of striking targets in China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The long-planned naval exercises were meant to symbolize a new age of cooperation between India and the United States. But the mid-range missile test, in one Western analyst’s view, “will be a lightning rod for criticism of India in the U.S.” and is almost certain to chill the emerging post-Cold War friendship between New Delhi and Washington.

The timing of the two military exercises was largely coincidental, analysts here say.

But the events dramatically underscored the mutual suspicions, frustrations and contradictions in the fast-shifting military alliances following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The two military milestones occurred after nearly a year of high-level negotiations between New Delhi and Washington, which has been largely supportive of India’s sudden search for new military partnerships in the West after the loss of its traditional military allies and suppliers in Moscow.

The joint naval exercises lasted just 24 hours and included two destroyers and two frigates from each side. They were an important demonstration of the American desire to strengthen a new relationship with the Soviet-supplied, Soviet-trained Indian navy, diplomats here said.

But at the same time, the Bush Administration has tried to use its promise of new military technologies, resources and joint training as leverage to get developing nations, such as India, to comply with Washington’s higher-priority policies on nuclear and missile non-proliferation.

It was against the backdrop of the Administration’s fervent, specific appeals for India to abandon its ballistic missile program that Friday’s launch was likely to trigger such sharp criticism from the U.S. Congress and the State Department that it probably will negate much of the goodwill generated by the naval exercises.

Moreover, the launch of India’s indigenously designed Agni missile--named after the Hindu god of fire--came just two weeks after the State Department imposed trade sanctions against the Indian Scientific Research Organization for refusing to cancel a $250-million order for rocket engines from Glavkosmos, the Russian space company.

“The overall sense is that there has been a window of opportunity for the U.S. to see how far the relationship can go with the Indians,” said one Western diplomat in New Delhi. “But the U.S. feels it has been very patient and yet really hasn’t gotten very far.”

It is a frustration demonstrated most clearly by the development of the Agni. Friday’s launch from the Indian coastal town of Chandipur-on-the-Sea into the Bay of Bengal was the second test-firing of the missile, capable of carrying a one-ton nuclear warhead to targets more than 1,500 miles from India. And Washington’s reaction is now all but predictable.

The first successful Agni launch in May, 1989--which made India the seventh nation on the globe with intermediate-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile capability--unleashed a torrent of criticism from the U.S. Congress and Administration. Bush officials warned just four days before the launch that the proliferation of such weapons is “cause for great concern.”

Testifying before a Senate committee on May 18, 1989, then-CIA Director William H. Webster said the missiles represented “one of the most dangerous conditions that our world faces today.” He predicted that, by the year 2000, at least 15 developing nations will manufacture their own ballistic missiles.

He stressed that the CIA was “particularly concerned about the growing missile race between India and Pakistan,” but added, “We believe the missile proliferation program or problem will affect every region of the world. It will become worse and may never become better.”

Referring to such testimony, one Administration official said this week, “The Indians are very well-aware that another Agni launch is going to draw a lot of fire from the U.S., but there is no real indication they’re prepared to modify any of the fundamentals of what the U.S. sees as a contentious policy.”

Behind India’s stubborn adherence to its ballistics program and its refusal to support the U.S.-sponsored Missile Technology Control Regime, an agreement signed by 18 Western nations in 1987 to limit the spread of missile technology, are a host of what Indian analysts call “our domestic compulsions.”

In a region of mutual suspicion, Indian strategists argue that they need a medium-range deterrent against China, their well-armed neighbor and onetime enemy in war. Not only does China--an early member of the world’s elite, ballistic-missile club--maintain an arsenal capable of striking India, but Beijing also has helped military scientists in Pakistan.

There is an internal political dimension to India’s missile program as well.

New Delhi’s recent moves to improve its ties with the United States have come after more than four decades, in which India took a lead role as an international spokesman and advocate for newly independent Third World nations, often targeting U.S. foreign policy as the epitome of neocolonialism and imperialism.

And as the ruling Congress-I Party has been forced to drastically reorient itself to the United States, opening up India’s debt-ridden economy and softening its socialist policies after the Soviet collapse, it has equally opened itself to angry criticism from the nation’s powerful leftist lobby.

The government was forced, for example, to downplay this week’s joint Indo-U.S. naval exercises. How officials did this was something of a case study in India’s seemingly schizophrenic military balancing act.

In the face of street protests by the Communist Party of India in the coastal city of Cochin, and confronting a spate of headlines in the morning newspapers that referred to “U.S. bullying” and “coping with the American prodding, bribing and blackmailing,” India’s deputy foreign minister called the exercises “routine” and “low key.” He sought to place the maneuvers in the context of similar, recent joint operations with the British and Australian navies.

“We’re not doing this because of American pressure or in spite of it,” an Indian defense analyst said. “We understand the American concern,” he added. “We do believe America has a legitimate security concern. . . . It is simply that each nation, as it’s evolving along its own path toward a certain military capability, and given its own geography, has a natural course of evolution. And Agni is a part of that evolutionary course. It’s just coincidence it happens to be launched at the same time as the naval exercise.”

A Western military analyst in New Delhi agreed that the timing of the two events was a coincidence. But he suggested there might be a far more critical interpretation likely to emerge from Washington.

“I think the timing is coincidental,” he said. “But it does very clearly and very succinctly highlight the deep contradiction in the relationship between India and the United States. The question is, of course, where does it go from here? And I doubt it will be clear sailing.”

Defense Exercises

The Indian and U.S. navies conducted their first joint exercise off the southwest coast of India. The 24-hour naval exercise was meant to update Indian technology and improve communications between the fleets. Meanwhile, India test launched the Agni surface-to-surface missile from a military range in Chandipur in the eastern state of Orissa.