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No change in US policy towards India, Pakistan

The United States administration has ruled out any change in the position of importance it recently accorded India and Pakistan in its foreign policy, setting at rest speculations on this count in the wake of President Bill Clinton's postponing his visit to the region.

''Nothing has changed,'' state department spokesman James P Rubin said, when asked whether the postponement indicated a policy review. Clinton was committed to visit India and Pakistan this year.

''(However) dates still remain to be worked out," he said, "Planning and preparations are continuing.''

To drive his point home, Rubin drew attention to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's visit in November to New Delhi and Islamabad, recalling how she rejected the advice against the trip (she was asked to devote herself fully to the international crisis that had then arisen out of the Iraqi decision to abruptly stop the United Nation's inspection of its weapons sites).

''You will see the extraordinary length to which she went not to postpone the visit, although she was under pressure to focus on Iraq,'' he said.

The spokesman said Albright felt that her visit to India and Pakistan was 'important' and it evoked 'quite a positive reaction' in both countries.

He, however, had no comment on the outcome of the meeting between Prime Minister I K Gujral and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Dhaka on Thursday -- their fourth in the last seven months -- apparently for want of full details.

Clinton, the spokesman continued, is keen on visiting the region, which no US president has visited in the last twenty years. Jimmy Carter was the last American head of state to visit India -- in January 1978, during the Janata regime headed by prime minister Morarji Desai. Carter's itinerary, however, did not include Pakistan.

The spokesman said that efforts are being made to accommodate a visit to Bangladesh also on Clinton's agenda.

UNI

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