India Nuclear Deal May Face Hard Sell

"I would say it is not only an act of statesmanship but an act of faith," said Ronen Sen, India's ambassador to the United States. "Both our countries were departing from something which has been well ingrained in the mind-sets of most of our people. We knew there was going to be significant opposition to change. Change is always viewed with suspicion and often viewed as subversive."

The following account is based on interviews with more than 20 U.S. and Indian officials, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivities involved.

A New Approach

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Rice indicated that a future Bush administration would take a new approach to India. In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, she said that "India is not a great power yet, but it has the potential to emerge as one" and pointedly noted that "India is an element in China's calculation, and it should be in America's, too."

Rice was national security adviser during Bush's first term and Robert D. Blackwill, one of her closest associates during the campaign, was named ambassador to India. As early as October 2001, he cabled Washington urging a rethinking of nuclear policy toward India, said Ashley Tellis, a Bombay-born expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former aide to Blackwill. But former secretary of state Colin L. Powell had endorsed a more incremental approach to increasing sensitive trade with India. "We also have to protect certain red lines that we have with respect to proliferation," he said in a 2003 interview.

During Rice's confirmation process, she was asked in a written questionnaire whether the administration anticipated that Congress would need to change laws regarding India policy. She answered no.

But within weeks, U.S. officials say, the White House decided to sell F-16 jets to Pakistan. Rice went to New Delhi to break the news -- and to cushion the blow by offering India the prospect of a broader strategic relationship, including military, economic and even nuclear cooperation.

Rice's presentation, while still vague about the specifics, sent shockwaves through New Delhi. "As Rice put across an unprecedented framework for cooperation with India, the establishment in Delhi was stunned," according to "Impossible Allies," a book on the deal by Indian journalist C. Raja Mohan, published last month in India. "Few had expected Rice to go this far."

From the Indian perspective, the partnership Rice suggested offered a way to finally remove the nuclear impediment to closer ties with the United States. "If you are going to be looking at India as a partner . . . then you have to treat India as a partner and not as a target," Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said. "Both these things cannot be done together."

Because of international restrictions, India's nuclear program is largely homegrown, cut off from international markets. This has hobbled India's use of nuclear power -- it provides only about 3 percent of installed electricity capacity -- and left it desperate for energy as its economy has soared.

A key designer of the new approach was Philip Zelikow, Rice's counselor and longtime colleague. Upon Rice's return from Asia, Zelikow began exchanging memos with Tellis, resulting in a 50-page "action agenda" for U.S.-Indian relations completed in mid-May.

The paper promoted geostrategic cooperation between the two countries rooted strongly in U.S. defense and military sales to India as a way to counter China's influence. "If the United States is serious about advancing its geopolitical objectives in Asia, it would almost by definition help New Delhi develop strategic capabilities such that India's nuclear weaponry and associated delivery systems could deter against the growing and utterly more capable nuclear forces Beijing is likely to possess by 2025," Tellis wrote.

Ten days after Rice's visit, when Bush announced the F-16 sale to Pakistan, State Department officials held a background briefing on the new India policy. One official -- identified by Mohan as Zelikow -- said the policy's "goal is to help India become a major world power in the 21st century. We understand fully the implications, including military implications, of that statement."