|
|
|
Email this citationCIAO DATE: 07/06
Indo-US Relations: Where Are They Headed?
Ronen Sen
CASI Working Paper
December 2005
Abstract
Introduction by Dr. Francine R. Frankel
(Director, Center for the Advanced Study of India)
I am Francine Frankel, director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India. It is a very special pleasure to extend a warm welcome to all of you for this special occasion. We are honored to welcome Ambassador of India Ronen Sen for a very unusual event. This is the opportunity to participate in a dialogue with India’s most distinguished diplomat and active participant in ongoing discussions of the potential for changing the direction of India-US relations and potentially the future great power balance in Asia.
Ambassador Sen took up his position in Washington in August 2004. He is a career diplomat with a long historical perspective on changing power alignments from the period of his postings in San Francisco and in Moscow during the Cold War, and subsequently as ambassador to the Russian Federation, Germany, and the United Kingdom in the 1990s and 2000s. He has been equally engaged in summit meetings and international fora ranging from the United Nations to the Commonwealth, the Non-Aligned Movement, the IAEA, the G15, and over 160 bilateral summit meetings. He was the immediate advisor on foreign policy to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during 1986, 1986 to ’89, and his successors in 1989 to ’91. Ambassador Sen has a deep knowledge, not only of foreign affairs but of defense and science and technology, having previously been secretary to the Atomic Energy Commission of India. It is difficult to imagine a better qualified person to deal with the new opportunities and challenges for building global partnership between the United States and India, the goal endorsed in the joint statement issued by President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Washington on July 18, 2005. Once implemented, an entirely new international policy reality will be created. On the US side, Washington is committed to put behind once and for all the policy of parity between India and Pakistan pursued by the United States since partition and to do this in tangible ways. The most notable is to assist India to achieve its status as a global power through a new framework for cooperation in high technology, including defense, space exploration, satellite navigation, and full civilian nuclear energy cooperation. This last commitment requires Congress to adjust US laws and policies. Similarly, India has agreed to voluntarily separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities and place its civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards. When changes of such magnitude need to be implemented, there are bound to be critics in both countries. What is clear is that Ambassador Ronen Sen is the right person in the right place at the right time.
Ambassador Sen today will provide a short overview of the challenges involved in taking this relationship many steps further, speaking for about twenty minutes. The remainder of the session will be organized around questions from the audience. Ambassador Sen has emphasized that the questions can address as broad a spectrum of issues as the audience wishes to raise, either about the implications of the joint declaration or other issues concerning India. This is therefore a unique opportunity for dialogue and an occasion for all of us to learn and deepen our understanding of some of the most important foreign policy issues of this decade. Ambassador Sen.
(Applause)
