Indo-Pakistan Stalemate Dims Plans for Clinton Visit

With no agreement yet by India and Pakistan to sign a treaty banning further nuclear tests, the White House has all but abandoned plans for President Clinton to visit the Asian subcontinent in November, according to senior U.S. officials.

Administration officials had hoped that Clinton’s trip, the first by a U.S. president since Jimmy Carter visited India two decades ago, would help quell a budding nuclear arms race in one of the world’s most volatile regions and raise Clinton’s stature as a peacemaker despite rising scandal at home.

But progress in separate closed-door talks--especially with India--has stalled, and tensions between the neighboring archrivals remain dangerously high, officials said. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947 and are locked in a bitter, low-intensity conflict in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

“This part of the world is headed in a downward spiral in terms of nuclear weapons,” a senior administration official said. “It’s going south in a hurry. There is no dialogue of any meaning.”

The final decision on Clinton’s trip will be made after discussions at the opening of the U.N. General Assembly next week, officials said.

Clinton will meet Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, on Monday. Sharif will meet his Indian counterpart, Atal Behari Vajpayee, on Wednesday. Vajpayee will arrive in New York too late to meet Clinton, officials said.

In addition, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott will meet for the sixth time with Jaswant Singh, India’s special envoy on the issue. Lower-level talks by technical experts were underway this week in New York.

India and Pakistan each detonated several underground nuclear devices last May, challenging the global status quo on nonproliferation and triggering a cutoff of non-humanitarian U.S. aid, a ban on bank lending to the two governments, a freeze on loans from international agencies and other economic sanctions.

Washington has taken the lead in negotiations to urge both countries to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the key demand for Western policymakers and the chief condition for Clinton’s visit. The leaders in India and Pakistan, however, face intense political pressure at home not to appear to be buckling under U.S. pressure.

“The [treaty] is the most high-profile thing we want, and the most difficult thing for either government to do,” said a congressional staffer who specializes in Asia.

The U.S. also seeks commitments by both nations to stop producing weapons-grade fissionable materials, to bar export of nuclear technology and to restrain from deployment of nuclear weapons.

In turn, New Delhi and Islamabad want to see sanctions eased, as well as other inducements. Pakistan, whose fragile economy has been harder hit by the sanctions, is seeking a multibillion-dollar financial bailout package and resumption of long-frozen U.S. sales of conventional weapons, according to Pakistani officials.

India wants access to nuclear energy technology, its officials said. India is now barred from receiving so-called dual-use technology, which may have military applications, because it refuses to allow international inspections.

“I don’t think . . . the U.S. or the Indians or the Pakistanis have specifically defined the bottom line yet,” said Teresita Schaffer, head of the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “But these are ingredients people are working with.”

Pakistan’s parliament began a heated debate of the test ban treaty in a specially convened joint session earlier this week. Although opposition members are boycotting the session, U.S. officials are optimistic that Sharif’s government will soon sign the pact.

New Delhi has given conflicting signals, however.

Although Vajpayee repeatedly has said India has no need for further tests, pro-nuclear hard-liners in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, have threatened to walk out of his already shaky coalition government if India agrees to sign.

“There’s real pessimism now, largely because of developments in India,” said George Perkovich, director of the Secure World Program at the Virginia-based W. Alton Jones Foundation. “The Indians are saying, ‘We just can’t do it this fast.’ ”