222. Telegram 1767 From the Embassy in India to the Department of State1 2
New Delhi, February 5, 1976,
0440Z.
Subject:
- Indo-US Relations and the Effect on US Relations With India’s Neighbors
- 1.
- As you know, I have been making it clear to all the senior Indians I have been seeing that improvement in Indo-US relations just cannot take place while the Prime Minister and other high Indian leaders continue to poke away at the US. I appreciate the tough parallel line taken by Joe Sisco with Ambassador Kaul in Washington. I don’t know what the effect of all this will be. India certainly has an interest in getting the things from us it needs. The point I am trying to get across is that these may no longer be available if relations are bad. I do not ask for much; I would be perfectly happy if Mrs. Gandhi were simply to ignore the us.
- 2.
- My reason for writing now is to explain why I am pursuing this hard line. It is not because I believe we have so little interest here that we should not care about what happens in India and the region generally. It is in fact because I believe there are some things of importance to us here and pursuing a hard line seems to be the only tactics which stand any chance of getting us what we want. My point is we still want stability in India and stability in the region. We still want an India where the Russians aren’t in control. We still believe india will be important to us as a moderate LDC in the ongoing international economic debate.
- 3.
- Consequently, it seems particularly important to me that we not complicate the effort we are making in India by shifts in relations with India’s neighbors which the Indian Government might see as threatening. Our problems with Mrs. Gandhi and her government are serious but they are essentially bilateral. And it would be a mistake I think to compound them by bringing in elements suggesting a change in the whole US position toward the subcontinental area.
- 4.
- At every crossroads in the Punjab there is a Sherman tank as a constant reminder that the US was India’s enemy in the past. It would be folly to add arms on the Pakistani (or Bengali) side which would only decorate more crossroads in the future. We are trying to get Mrs. Gandhi’s attention by the tough bilateral line we are taking. We do not, however, want to totally concentrate our focus and facilitate her domestic political problems by providing real ammunition for her to use against us on the supersensitive issue of Indian security and her relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
- 5.
- I am sure there will be issues other than arms that raise the same question—things we will be tempted to do for our friends, the Pakistanis and Bengalis. The Bengali effort to get us to help them get rid of a troublesome general (Nuruzzaman) is a case in point. I heartily agree with the way Washington is handling this one. I don’t intend to comment on each one of these things as they come up but thought it worthwhile to elaborate on the policy I am following here.
Saxbe
- Source: Ford Library, National Security Adviser, Presidential Country Files for Middle East and South Asia, Box 12, India, State Telegrams to Secretary of State NODIS (3). Secret; Nodis.↩
- Ambassador Saxbe reported that he had protested the fact that Prime Minister Gandhi and other high Indian officials continued to criticize publicly the U.S. Saxbe agreed that the “hard line” was justified, but urged that U.S. arms sales to India’s neighbors would deepen Indian suspicions and adversely affect Indian domestic and South Asian regional stability.↩