To a friend of India, the security scenario in South Asia must cause concern. A kind of equivocation is clearly visible in the Clinton Administration's perceptions.
I think the Administration is able to focus now on what the real situation is, and that's primarily because of the terrible things that havehappened in these parts. I think America now sees Pakistan for what it is, understands fully that it is a nation that allows terror to be trained and exported from within its borders. They have seen that they have made an incursion in Jammu and Kashmir, crossing the Line of Control. And they have seen the Indian government and the military act very maturely, very responsibly in beating back that attack, specially because India was the victim and Pakistan the perpetrator. India used its conventional forces in a very responsible, measured and temperate way and prevailed without any great sense of panic.

I think that the fall of the government in Pakistan shows clearly -- if anybody had any doubt that they would really not brook civilian control over the military, that the military can do whatever it wants and also that there are militant religious fundamentalists that, somewhere, are called to act.

After the military takeover in Pakistan, there have been voices emanating from the Administration sayingthat, well, one could have a dialogue with General Musharraf.
Have there been? No. As a matter of fact, the Administration has put out strong statements the Congress resolutions which I introduced and they supported have condemned the military takeover. In my view, there is no way the President of the United States can visit Pakistan. Who will he visit with? There is no prime minister. There is no duly elected head of government. They would not reward Musharraf by a visit. They have urged publicly, diplomatically, that the military government declare immediately when it will have free elections so that the will of the people can be once again heard and democracy restored.

But not being able to go to Pakistan may affect Clinton's visit to India.
No, it won't. I think what's happening here is that if Clinton announces the visit he will have to announce a schedule. If he announces that he is probably not going to Pakistan, he takes away the leverage of both getting Pakistan to declare whenthey will hold elections and in somehow safeguarding the life of Nawaz Sharif. I think that's why the President has not announced the date.

You are sure in your own mind that the visit will take place?
I can't guarantee it, of course. Things did come up internally... cancel the visit, etc. But in my discussions he was very desirous of coming to India and Hillary Clinton has been encouraging him ever since she made a visit here with Chelsea. She had a wonderful visit.

You have commented that it took a nuclear test to draw US attention. One thing that worries Indians is the equation that the Administration assumes existing here between India, Pakistan and China. For example, 90 per cent of Pakistan's nuclear programme reportedly depends on Chinese help. US intelligence agencies have sufficient proof that China has been breaking the MTCR protocol. Yet, the US does not do anything to restrain China.
First, the US can't restrain anybody. We don't just march in and put handcuffs on people inother countries. When people had gripes about things that were going on, whether it be in India, China or Pakistan or France and...

I was thinking in terms of effective sanctions.
We imposed sanctions on China several years ago, when they launched missiles. We myself we in Congress claimed that magnet rings were being shipped from China to Pakistan. The Administration was not sure of that. At present, the view is that there is no exchange of technology or material between China and Pakistan, but we don't know how long that's going to last. So it's important to keep the pressure on. With regard to Chinese testing, we have not seen that in a while.

Your initial premise was that it took a nuclear blast to draw US attention. No, the US was paying more and more attention to India. And the nuclear blast... well, everybody had to pay attention because everybody heard a lot of noise. That caught our attention, but it did not help the relationship.

As a matter of fact it was a setback because whenIndia did that we knew -- and India certainly knew it would provoke a similar response from Pakistan. When you don't have such things as CTBT, these things have a life of their own and there are hyper-stances in the region. It did get US attention, but not in a positive fashion.

The explosion that would get US attention in a positive way was the things that were going on in FICCI and the Indo-American Business Council. And for that to come to fruition and for the government to say, okay, we are not just going to say, why don't American companies invest in India? we are now going to say there are no barriers, there are no tariffs, there are no restrictions. You can do here what you can do in your country -- form partnership joint stock companies. Help us and we'll help you, and we understand competition is good. That would really get everybody's attention in a positive way.

Don't you think the US is wrong in equating India with Pakistan and that India's need for nuclear weapons may stem from the threatfrom China?
Oh no, we shouldn't be equating India with Pakistan. Well, so many in America have thought of India and Pakistan as one word -- as a hyphenated word. Now they understand that there is a difference. Pakistan helped them see how it is different from India and it did it much to their detriment.The point that we cannot equate India and Pakistan was made in a very tragic and dramatic way.

In the eyes of the Administration, would this new position legitimise India's nuclear arsenal, especially with regard to China?
I don't know that India needs to legitimise its nuclear arsenal. India has spent a lot of time in talking about the problems of Pakistan. Well, all the while, the real problem has always been China. Pakistan is never going to be a serious long-term threat to India and its independence. Put simply, they just can't beat India. China, on the other hand, is pretty big, has a lot of people, has a lot of capability and has demonstrated some territorial aggressiveness from time totime that India never has. I think more time has to be spent explaining to US policy-makers that China can be a problem, that China can be a proliferator, that India is not producing or developing anything that it is exporting or transferring to others who may be a problem. China has. Pakistan has. And those are the real problems. That should bother the mind of America as well.