He has said as president he would not ratify the CTBT either, let alone re-submit it to the Republican-led Senate, which last year rejected it much to the consternation and humiliation of the Clinton administration. The Republican platform has also ridiculed the CTBT and described it as "another anachronism of obsolete strategic thinking.

"Gore, on the other hand, has asserted that re-submitting the CTBT to the Senate and hopefully pushing it through with the support of the American people would be his first major foreign policy initiative, if elected. Both he and his advisers, when asked pointedly if a Gore administration would pressure India to sign the CTBT have been circumspect, but made no bones that signing the accord would be in India's own national security interests.

In fact, Gore said this to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee too during a luncheon he hosted in honour of Vajpayee in September. His party's manifesto said: "As president, Al Gore will promptly re-submit this treaty to the Senate with a demand from the American people for its ratification." On the issue of sanctions imposed on India after its May 1998 Pokharan nuclear tests, Bush has said he would favour the immediate lifting of all US sanctions against New Delhi, while Gore has remained circumspect on this score too. Although his administration, like the Clinton administration would have the permanent authority vested in it by the Congress to waive all sanctions, he would want to use this authority as leverage against countries like India and also use it as a quid pro quo for bargaining on New Delhi's acquiescence to the CTBT.

On China too there are major differences between the remarks of Bush and Gore and their party's respective platforms, with Bush saying his administration would not pander to China but instead would recognise India's greatness as a democracy and a bastion of secularism and pluralism. Gore has emphasised the importance of Beijing and asserted that China has to be engaged.

While Bush has strongly repudiated the Clinton administration's policy of seeing China as a "strategic partner" and said Beijing is nothing but a "strategic competitor," Gore and his party platform have spoken of the imperative of engaging China - "a nation with 1.3 billion people, a nuclear arsenal and a role to play in the 21st century that is destined to be one of the basic facts of international life." It is only on the question of Kashmir that both Bush and Gore say that this is a dispute that has to be resolved in accordance with the Shimla Accord through bilateral negotiations and that there is no place for US intervention or mediation unless unambiguously invited by both India and Pakistan to do so. However, in terms of offering the US good offices to help bring about the resolution of the Kashmir crisis the Gore camp has been more aggressive in saying that India should seriously consider this offer.

(India Abroad News Service)