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India, BD announce Clinton's visit

NEW DELHI: India announced on Tuesday that U.S. President Bill Clinton would visit the country in late March, and said it hoped the trip would lead to a new and closer bilateral relationship.

"At the invitation of the president of India, President Clinton of the United States will visit India from March 20, 2000 for approximately five days," Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Raminder Singh Jassal told reporters.

"The visit of the U.S. president is expected to pave the way for a qualitatively new and closer relationship between the two democracies."

Clinton, who cancelled plans to visit South Asia after India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests two years ago, will be the first U.S. president to visit India since Jimmy Carter in 1978.

His talks in India are likely to cover a wide range of issues, including economic links, nuclear non-proliferation and terrorism, of which India says it is a victim in the bitterly disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

Asked if Clinton's visit to New Delhi and possibly one or two other cities was conditional on India signing the global treaty banning nuclear tests, Jassal said: "I think it would be a mistake to link this to a specific issue or subject".

"The proposal for a visit has been on the cards for some time. There was just the question of matching calenders and pinpointing the timeframe," he added.

India and the United States have had 10 rounds of high-level dialogue on arms control and other issues since New Delhi conducted a series of nuclear tests in May 1998.

The tests provoked a storm of outrage from countries around the globe and some, including the United States, clamped economic sanctions on India. However, Washington and New Delhi have drawn closer in their wide-ranging rounds of talks.

In December, the United States said it would ease some of the sanctions it imposed by trimming the list of Indian government agencies and firms hit by U.S. export curbs.

Analysts said that move by Washington, which has led Western efforts to corral New Delhi into the global regime for nuclear arms control, was timed to encourage New Delhi to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

In October, the U.S. Senate voted against ratifying the treaty, giving India more time to reach a political consensus on joining the CTBT it says it needs.

India has already declared a unilateral moratorium on underground nuclear tests.

There has, however, been no word on whether the president will visit Pakistan.

Pakistan conducted tit-for-tat nuclear blasts soon after India's, spurring international fears of a nuclear arms race on the subcontinent.

One U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, said a decision on whether to visit Pakistan would be made at a later date.

The United States has maintained that it will not mediate in the 50-year-old dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir unless asked by both sides.

India and the United States agreed last month to set up a counter-terrorism body to hunt the hijackers of an Indian airliner and prevent similar attacks in future.

Pakistan denies Indian claims that it masterminded the week-long hijacking of the plane at the end of last year. The 155 passengers and crew were freed after India released a jailed Pakistani Muslim scholar and two freedom fighters from Kashmiri jails.

However, the United States has said it has credible evidence that the hijackers were from a group which receives some support from the Pakistani government.

"U.S. President Bill Clinton will visit Bangladesh on March 25," Sharjil Hasan, a foreign ministry director-general said at a news briefing on Tuesday. He did not say how long the visit would last.

"The announcement was simultaneously made in Dhaka and Washington at 10.30 GMT on Tuesday," Hasan said, adding that Clinton's visit will be the first by a U.S. president to Bangladesh.

"Clinton's visit would lay the groundwork for broadening and strengthening relations between Bangladesh and the USA," he said but did not elaborate.-Reuters