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US could lift India sanctions within 6 months: Celeste

US economic sanctions imposed on India after its nuclear tests in 1998 could be lifted within six months, the outgoing US envoy to India said on Friday.

The sanctions prevent the sale of US nuclear energy producing equipment, rocket motor technology, supercomputers and military equipment to India. They also restrict certain Indian companies from doing business in the United States.

"I wouldn't be surprised if it happens in the next three-to- six months' time frame, given the present mood in Washington," US ambassador to India Richard Celeste told reporters at a farewell meeting capping a three-and-a-half year posting.

"But I don't think it will happen as immediately as people would like it," said Celeste who leaves India at the end of his term in April. He will be replaced by Robert Blackwill, a career diplomat.

The sanctions have been a key irritant in relations between New Delhi and Washington, which have otherwise put their strained ties of the Cold War era behind them.

The two countries have made intensive efforts to improve ties and have exchanged visits by their heads of government.

Earlier this month, India's Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh met President George W Bush in Washington and said the Bush administration was giving considerably greater weight to the recent momentum in India-US relations.

India and the US also agreed to initiate military co-operation and Bush accepted an invitation to visit India though no date has been set.

NEW CANDOUR

Celeste, a former governor of Ohio, said that India-US relations had acquired a new candour in the last two years in contrast to the earlier "paranoia and suspicion". "Right now, on the diplomatic side, the relationship continues to move up but on the economic side it has fallen on hard times," he said.

Celeste said that it was a manifestation of the close economic ties between the two countries that the downturn in the US economy was hurting Indian technology firms for which the United States is the largest market. Thousands of Indian engineers have in recent years migrated to the United States to work for global tech firms, helping to make the Indian-American community a growing political force in the United States.

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