Bush, on Way To India, Stops In Afghanistan

On Wednesday, Pakistani security forces struck a militia training camp near the Afghan border, killing 45 fighters, including a Chechen commander linked to al-Qaeda, the army announced. Terrorism will be at top of the agenda when Bush and Musharraf meet this weekend.

[On Thursday, two bombs exploded near the U.S. Consulate in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, killing three people and wounding 34, the Associated Press reported, citing police.]

Bush landed in New Delhi on Wednesday night but attended no events. In his first trip to the country, the world's largest democracy, the president will juggle talks over India's nuclear program with new overtures to tighten relations on issues from fighting terrorism to increasing trade.

Despite greatly improved relations between Washington and New Delhi in the past few years, Bush is a controversial figure in India. His visit has sparked loud opposition from Muslims as well as leftist political parties allied with the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Hours before Bush's arrival, tens of thousands of protesters, most of them Muslims, gathered in a dusty fairground in the capital to proclaim him an unwelcome guest, waving black-and-white flags and chanting "Bush is a killer" as hundreds of police in riot gear looked on.

"I believe that Bush has harmed peace all over the world," said Arif Mahmood, 32, a Muslim cleric at the protest. "There are good people in America and we have nothing against those people. But we hate all the people who support this government and its policies. Eighty percent of American policy is about bullying the rest of the world."

A new survey of attitudes toward the United States in the Indian newsmagazine Outlook found that 46 percent of Indians "love the country," 14 percent hate it and 55 percent believe that "India can trust the United States in times of need." On the other hand, 72 percent answered yes to the question "Is America a bully?"

For India's powerful socialist and communist parties, the visit has become a lightning rod for criticism that Singh's government, led by the Congress party, has acceded too readily to American pressure on issues such as Iran.

"We do want India to have relations with countries, but it has to be on an equal footing," Brinda Karat, a member of Parliament from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said in an interview. "The Bush visit, and the context of the Bush visit, shows that what is being demanded of India is not as an equal partner."

Still, there is no denying the warming trend between the two countries following decades of Cold War estrangement, when India was a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and more recent tensions stemming from India's nuclear tests in 1998.

The improvement reflects the Bush administration's eagerness to cultivate India as a partner in efforts to fight terrorism and promote democracy, and as a strategic counterweight to China. It also reflects India's growing economic importance.

Harish Khare, a columnist for the English-language Hindu newspaper, wrote Wednesday that Bush's visit had evoked "all the dormant emotions Indians feel towards the U.S.: outright hostility, unspoken suspicion, and a grudging admiration for the American model."

Much of the anxiety surrounding Bush's visit centers on the nuclear deal, which would lift the U.S. ban on the sale of civilian nuclear technology to India if it separates military and civilian nuclear facilities and opens up the civilian ones to international inspections.

Singh's government has embraced the plan as crucial to the country's energy future. But opposition politicians and some nuclear strategists have criticized it as a threat to India's nuclear deterrent, prompting Singh to declare in an address to Parliament on Monday that the government would not agree to any arrangement that compromises its weapons program.

His critics have not been persuaded. Karat said the deal has "very clear repercussions on the rights India would have to maintain its own nuclear program," and she accused the Bush administration of "shifting the goal posts" during negotiations.

Karat and other leftist politicians also have used the Bush visit to press for the removal of U.S. Ambassador David C. Mulford, who recently caused a stir in India by publicly suggesting that if the government did not support U.S. efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program, Congress would not approve the civilian nuclear deal with India.