BackIndia tells John Kerry US snooping is ‘unacceptable’
Presenting US point of view, Kerry says Obama has made 'unprecedented' efforts to ensure better oversight of intelligence
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New Delhi: India and the US on Thursday discussed contentious issues, including a proposed immigration law to discourage skilled overseas workers to safeguard American jobs, which could hurt India’s $118 billion software services industry.
Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj said she had also raised the issue of the American National Security Agency (NSA) snooping on targets in India, including leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with US secretary of state John Kerry, who is in New Delhi for the fifth India-US strategic dialogue. This is the first face-to-face interaction between the two government since the 2014 general election brought the BJP to power.
Both sides spoke about harnessing the latent potential in the bilateral relationship, which has seen several ups and downs in the past months.
“On our part, we see great potential for the United States as a global partner. We underlined our interest in seeing a much more robust American presence in the Indian economy," Swaraj said at the end of talks with Kerry. India looked forward to the visit next week by US defence secretary Chuck Hagel, she added.
Both Kerry and Hagel are to lay the ground for a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama in Washington on 30 September.
On his part, Kerry said with the new Indian government, “the moment has never been more ripe to deliver on the incredible possibilities of the relationship between our nations". The US and India “should be indispensable partners in the 21st century", he added.
On the US immigration reform Bill, Swaraj said India was not against the proposed law as “immigration is your (the US) internal matter".
“But we are certainly concerned with the provisions which will affect the Indian IT industry if the Bill is passed in the present form and I also told secretary Kerry that it will send a very negative signal and that too at a time when India is opening up its economy for foreign players," Swaraj said.
In response, Kerry said Obama “would support some changes" in the Bill but only after mid-term Senate elections that are coming up after three months. The reforms were approved by the Senate last year and are yet to be cleared by the House of Representatives.
The Bill recognizes the persistent shortage of skilled workers in the US by expanding the annual caps on H-1B visas and employer-sponsored green cards, but nullifies some of these gains by placing a number of restrictive conditions on the employment, deployment and salaries of foreign workers under the H-1B and L-1 programmes.
H-1B visas are provided to individuals who work in a speciality occupation. It requires a person to have a higher education degree or its equivalent.
On recent allegations that Washington’s NSA targeted the BJP, Swaraj said: “I raised this issue and even told them that when the news came out in the Indian media, people were angry. I also told them that if we consider each other friendly countries, it is unacceptable that a friendly country spies on other friendly nations."
A classified document made public by the Washington Post a month ago showed that the BJP was among authorized targets for the NSA in 2010.
Presenting the US point of view, Kerry said that Obama had made “unprecedented" efforts to ensure better oversight of intelligence. “But let me just say very clearly: we value our relationship with India...and we also value the sharing of information between each other regarding counter-terrorism and other threats to both of our countries."
A joint statement issued after the talks said Kerry welcomed India’s decision to raise the cap on foreign direct investment in several sectors, including defence, railways, e-commerce and insurance.
On operationalizing a civil nuclear deal between India and the US—signed in 2008 and seen as the mark of transformed relations between the two countries previously known as estranged democracies—the joint statement said Swaraj and Kerry “reaffirmed their commitment to the full implementation of the India-US civil nuclear agreement".
The non-operationalization of the deal because of impediments including India’s strict nuclear liability law that places a steep penalty on foreign suppliers of nuclear plants rather than the Indian operator has been a source of friction between India and the US.
It was the US that negotiated a civil nuclear pact with India, which overturned a 34-year old embargo against India entering global nuclear commerce.
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