The Barack Obama administration did not get off to a very good start with India, a former US Ambassador to India has said, but asserted that during the forthcoming presidential visit there will be enough aggregated forward movement that can put this perception behind.
"I think it's widely shared around the national security community in both countries that the Obama administration did not get off to a very good start with India," Robert Blackwill, former US Ambassador to India, told reporters in a briefing on President Obama's India visit.
He said when President Obama took office he faced global recession and two wars took his time up and he got distracted. And the Kashmir issue, which President during his campaign talked about a US diplomatic emissary to Kashmir, of course, "is anathema to India".
"Dick (Richard) Holbrooke's efforts to include India in his portfolio in that regard, and then US-China communiqué in Beijing which seemed to say that China had a role in South Asia and may be even in Kashmir, and then the IT services dispute and so forth," Blackwill said.
"So I think, yes, it got off to a rather rocky start. And again, to be fair on the Indian side, you have a complicated coalition government -- and a lot of other things on the Indians' mind, too. I think that's why this visit is so important.
"And hopefully, in all the dimensions that I mentioned, there will be enough aggregated forward movement that we can put that perception behind us and the two governments can say to one another and to everybody else: Well, we might have gotten off to a kind of slow start here, but now watch our momentum. So that's what I think," Blackwill said.
Blackwill is currently the Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations -- a prestigious US-based think tank.
The former US Ambassador said Obama administration to put more pressure on Pakistan.
"I think that there have to begin to be consequences for bad behaviour on the part of the Pakistan military. And we'll see after the President has his discussions with the prime minister and the top of the Indian government and comes home, and they'll, I imagine, have a review.
"We know there'll be a review in December of the Afghan policy, and I assume closely associated with that will be a review of the Pakistan policy," he said.
"I very much hope that the US would be willing to put more pressure on Pakistan; for example, saying military aid is directly tied to the two issues I mentioned before, and we are not going to provide military aid if there is evidence, as there is, that Pakistan is supporting cross-border terrorism against India and if there is evidence, as there is, that Pakistan is supporting these Afghan Taliban sanctuaries inside Pakistan. I wouldn't send a dime -- not 10 cents -- to the Pakistan military if they continue their current conduct," he said.
