Speeches & Remarks

Excerpts from Ambassador David C. Mulford's
Roundtable with Dainik Jagran Editorial Board
May 23, 2008

Ambassador Mulford:  Before we begin with detailed questions I just wanted to make a point that I always make and you've maybe heard before but I'd still like to just underline the point.  That is that I've been here now four and a half years, and during that period we have seen a most enormous growth in this relationship.  I think it's very important to convey the magnitude of that growth and the diversity of that growth because I think it does a lot to explain what goes on between the two countries.

We have here a diplomatic Mission which is today the largest Mission in the United States system, bigger than any other Mission in the world. It's also very large in terms of the diversity of its components.  We have, I think, at the moment 24 entities or agencies of the U.S. Government of one kind or another, so that in our daily activities we really are engaged with or touch every area of life between the two countries.

As Ambassador I have dedicated myself to supporting all those activities as opposed to just focusing on the high level political issues or strategic issues because I think it's very important that this broad relationship is developed at every point.  So when you look at the fields of health or health care, military relations, economic, political, space, civil nuclear, energy groups that are meeting and working, counter-terrorism, education, and civil aviation, air transportation…As I say to people, being Ambassador is a little bit like being the CEO of a company with 24 divisions.  They're not for profit, but they do run as separate entities.

This is reflective of both the development of the bilateral relationship and also the nature of the relationship because the two countries are both enormous, diverse democracies that share a wide range of values and attributes.  The free press, rule of law, pluralistic societies, many religious groups, religious tolerance, courts that function, a military in each case that's under the control of civilian political leadership, and so on.  We may be different but we have many common features or similar values in our systems.  The diversity of both countries leads to a diversity in the contact.  I think it's very important that people bear in mind what I call the comprehensive nature of the relationship.

It is very different than we have with most other countries and it is the thing that drives the relationship forward.  We have a very large Indian population in the United States, a very successful immigrant population, very respected, demonstrating their competence as citizens and professionals.  They demonstrated in their competence as lobbyists in the case of the civil nuclear agreement.  They really demonstrated that they could be effective on both sides of the political aisle.  They knew how to do it.  They knew how to be effective in America, they knew how to raise the money and make the points and so on.  It was a pretty impressive show.

That is why I make the statement that the civil nuclear agreement, because of its strategic importance and the preoccupations of the political class and the media here has, in a way, sucked the oxygen out of a lot of other areas in the relationship.  So when you meet people and talk about things, they tend to look more at a single issue like civil nuclear to see how things are going.  But if you want to know how the relationship's really going then you have to make an assessment of how things are going with all these other areas as well. 
 
Question:  There's a very clear [impression] that the nuclear deal reached a stage of now or never…

Ambassador Mulford:  Well, no, those words aren't the right words.  I think it's important to back up and understand that the timetable for the nuclear deal was set a long time ago in the light of the negotiations and the legislative activity in the United States.  We completed our work on the 1-2-3 agreement in July of last year.  The idea was that since both governments had agreed, we would then go forward together to the next steps which were the IAEA step and the NSG step and from there we would go back to the U.S. Congress for the final vote which is an up or down vote.

The political situation here has changed all that.  When we started talking about the timetable - and it's not just us here at the embassy or just the administration, it's also the members of Congress who have come here, and you've heard them make these points.  Their plan was to receive this deal for processing with the Congress in January at the time when they started up again.  They did that because the legislative process around the Hyde Act specified certain steps that were visualized to be required and taken in the Congress to process the deal, so that was a deadline and that deadline was missed.  The fact that it was missed simply meant that as time went on it got harder and harder to visualize that kind of process being carried out in the Congress.

Now we're at a different situation and the situation at the moment is that we are down to a shrinking window for action because we know that the IAEA will require a certain amount of time to convene a meeting and to have a board approval.  We know that the Nuclear Suppliers Group will not process anything unless the IAEA has acted.  And the Nuclear Suppliers Group has its own rules about convening a meeting, how long the notice period is, the study period, and so on.  So inevitably there's going to be some time required to do those two steps.

Insofar as the Congress is concerned, we are at the point now where the original timetable cannot be met and the original process laid out cannot be honored.  The Congress is a unique body, a sovereign body.  Its leadership is a relatively small group of leaders and they are able to determine how they wish to conduct a piece of business.  So it is not possible to know in advance how this group of political leaders will decide to handle a particular issue…So when we say a shrinking window, that really is what we mean.  We can only keep saying if there's going to be a completion of this deal then we do need to be able to move ahead as soon as possible.  At the same time we patiently are watching the Indian political process, we are respecting that process.  We've been very quiet about it since last year.  We hope this is understood…

Question:  Are you suggesting that the coming month of June is quite crucial then as far as the nuclear deal is concerned. Or there are thoughts that the U.S. Congress can rework its timetable?

Ambassador Mulford:  Well, I can't speak for the Congress but I think we're down to the last days, in my opinion, for a good practical chance of getting this done in this Administration.  I can't say whether Congress would change its schedule.  It seems to me very unlikely that it would.

Question:  If it were not to go through, would the new Government when it's formed renegotiate the whole thing?

Ambassador Mulford:  …The fact is very simple, that George Bush, President Bush, made a historic step here when you consider the history of non-proliferation as an issue in the United States and all the years of the Cold War and the security that Americans prize and so on.  He took an absolutely unique step forward and he did so in the face of widespread opposition from the non-proliferation groups in the United States.  And although the votes to change the law in both the House and the Senate were large, bipartisan majorities which was very favorable to India, I think you must know from visitors who have come out here, that those majorities were much less secure than you might imagine.  A lot of people decided they didn't want to vote against India and India's future.  So although they had reservations about the Hyde Act, they decided they would support it because they knew there would be another vote and at that point they'd be able to make a better judgment in light of what was in the "1-2-3 Agreement" which was not known at the time of the first vote.

The passage of time has also made a difference, you've seen a letter from Sam Nunn and Henry Kissinger and George Shultz talking about trying to move the initiative back to a world of disarmament and bans on testing and so on.  With the rise of concern over Iran and the rise in fears about uncontrolled proliferation and terrorists being able to get their hands on these things and so on, the atmosphere is changing.  I think as you look forward to a new Administration, and it doesn't matter which Administration it is, there will be a new debate if this is revived.

At that point I can't conceive of the very same deal being offered.  I think there would be new hearings, I think the non-proliferation community would renew their attacks.  I think they'd find a lot more concern.  The Senate and the House are both in the hands of Democrats now.  As a party, they're more susceptible to the non-proliferation groups.  But it doesn't matter who's in the White House, I think.  The general opinion in the Congress today is that this deal not only was utterly and totally unique, but it was also too good a deal for India.  There are people who would want to pull that back now and try to sort of put some new conditions and restrictions and so on, which I think would be harder to get accepted here in India.

So that is why I remain very pessimistic about the future if it's not done in this administration.  I also know that many of the Democrats and Republicans who had qualms about the vote are very keen that it's done in this administration because they don't want it to come back in the next administration and have to really go through it again.

Question:  [Is it true that the Congress] issued a gag order recently about the civil nuclear agreement…?

Ambassador Mulford:  If you want to change your wording on that question maybe I can give you a better answer, but here we made the judgment not to comment for a period of about five months out of respect for India's political process.  I decide that if every time we say anything it creates a hubbub, then the best thing to do is just stand back, keep quiet, and let the process work.  We've tried to do that.

In January I came back in because I felt we have to start to say time is passing and what the implications are of the passage of time.  We've continued to say we had hoped we'd go to the IAEA by now.  Bear that in mind, because we don't want to end up with fingerpointing at the end of the day that we didn't do our job.  Because we're ready to do our job, and have been since last September.

Question:  […What would be the effect if the deal isn't completed…]?

Ambassador Mulford:  That's where I think my introductory remarks are important, because when I think of this relationship, this broad relationship I described, I describe it as a sort of a donut.  The rim of the donut is what I call the civil driven, private sector driven, people to people driven relationship of this huge diversity which runs on, it seems, no matter what.  And the heart of the relationship, the donut hole, is what I call the official bilateral center.  If you ask what would happen if there was a failure in this deal, I think the answer is to the great bulk of the relationship there would be no significant impact.  I think at the heart of the relationship there would inevitably be some, because if you consider what goes on in the heart of that relationship, there are in sensitive areas, areas of discretion, bureaucratic discretion and so on, where there are lingering restrictions, not by law, but policy restrictions.  If you'd done the civil nuclear deal I think it would sort of kind of blow all that stuff forward.  If you don't do it, it seems to me you might feel that for a while people get more cautious in some of those areas or the level of trust is somewhat less or there are more questions or there is a little less discretion.  But over the long run, I think that would clear up as well.  The common features of this relationship, the common interests of the United States and India in the world today are such that there's every reason to believe we would have a strong relationship on that basis…

Question:  Can we go off the nuclear deal?

Ambassador Mulford:  Any time you want to.  [Laughter]. 

Question:  In the wake of elections the Democrats being at the helm of affairs in the U.S. cannot be ruled out.  What will the future approach towards the war on terror and Iran especially?

Ambassador Mulford:  First of all, I don't know who's going to win the election and I can't possibly speculate on what future policies would be.  Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to.

Question:  Why is there almost no [contact with Iran]…?

Ambassador Mulford:  To understand the relationship with Iran, you have to go back to the period of the hostages.  We have now had 27 or 28 years of no relations with Iran and an Iran that is very hostile towards the United States.  The behavior of Iran at the time of the hostage-taking was not something that Americans forget or forgive.  And Iran is seen as unfriendly, hostile, and a major threat to world stability because it is the world's leading financier and sponsor of terror in the region and elsewhere.  And it is developing, we believe, a nuclear program.  It has no reason to need a nuclear program.  It has adequate resources for its own energy requirements from sources other than nuclear.  We believe the reasons for that development are in order that they can have nuclear weapons.  We believe they would likely use those weapons and they've made it very clear that they intend to use them against Israel.  So when you add up all those things there is a feeling in the United States that unless Iran can demonstrate some willingness to undertake a more reasonable position, we would not engage with them.

Question:  [Are you saying]… that Iran has any [nuclear weapons]…?

Ambassador Mulford:  No, they seek to develop nuclear weapons, is what I said.  I think the fear there is that A, they would develop nuclear weapons; and B, that they might make them available to terrorist organizations as opposed to countries, which would be a completely new, a threat of entirely different magnitude and diversity.  So we see a very dangerous situation there.  That is a broadly accepted American bipartisan position.

Question:  Back to India, the Indian government has completed fourth year in office.  I would like to know how you would rate its performance on economic reforms and Indo-U.S. relations.

Ambassador Mulford:  I think first of all on the reform issue, because I'm a specialist in practical [economic] reform and have been for many years, I look at the Indian reform picture as beginning in 1991.  I see the reform process as a gradual process here, moving quickly at one time or another, then moving slowly.  I've been struck by the fact that when considering reforms, in India it is regarded as necessary to achieve a high degree of consensus, because otherwise the reform will be undone.  That's an Indian philosophical point of view and perfectly legitimate.

So when you look at reform you have to judge it by those sorts of values.  I think this government has done some very important reforms.  I think that the Open Skies Agreement was a key macro-economic reform which you can see unfolding every day in domestic air travel, international air travel, international cargo, the growth of airports, the growth of air traffic control system, the training of pilots, and the buying of aircraft.  It's going to transform the way in which people do business in India because they can now travel quickly and easily for the day somewhere where they used to go only as a major trip.  So for all those reasons it's a very obvious, fundamental reform.  That negotiation was done when I was here in a fairly short period of time, about three or four months.  After about 20 years of sort of waiting and maneuvering and so on.  So that's an example.

I think another example of important reform is the VAT tax application on a country-wide basis.  Again, that's a macro-economic reform which affects the entire market of India and so I would call that a major accomplishment.

I think the introduction and passage of legislation in the intellectual property area is very important.  The process by which standards are defined and enforcement is developed is slow.  It's happening, but it takes time.  But the essential reforms are there.

Now the government has had the problem of managing a coalition during this period and as time has passed, as we've seen on civil nuclear, that has gotten more difficult.  There are some reforms that I would love to have seen made, such as greater liberalization in the banking system, for example, which have not been possible.  But I think like any Indian government you have to look at this against the broad background of, first of all, the magnitude of the challenge; and secondly, the pace of what's politically possible.

So I would say that all the governments since 1991 of different political parties have all made important contributions to the reform process and that is why starting around 2002 after that 10 or 12 year period of investment in reform, India began to move past the six percent growth level.  That wasn't accomplished overnight.  That was the fruits of a decade of effort and reform.  And because the things have been done that have been done, probably the growth rate will be sustained pretty steadily in the sort of 7.5 to 9 percent range and may eventually rise higher if further progress is made.

Question:  …It seems the world economy, especially the U.S. economy seems to be slowing down more.  What is the U.S. Government doing to bring down this crisis because it has very wide implications for the world economy…?

Ambassador Mulford:  The U.S. has done a number of things.  First of all, there's been a dramatic reduction in interest rates which is aimed at restimulating the economy.  There has been huge government preoccupation with the fallout from the sub-prime crisis, the mortgage crisis, the housing market, and various steps have been taken or advocated in our system.  Of course lots of things that are advocated have to be functioned on by the Congress.  The evaluation of the slowdown is difficult, how big it is, and whether we're in recession or not.  Technically we're not yet in a recession, but nobody wants to see the kind of decline in growth we've seen, and everybody recognizes the need is to try to build growth again. 

So the United States is, you can bet, utterly preoccupied with restoring its momentum.  There is one thing about the United States economy that the world should remember but seems to forget from time to time, and that is that it's a very flexible animal and responds very effectively to policy initiatives.  So that remaking the U.S. economy is something that can happen much more quickly in the United States than generally it happens in other countries.

So I'm confident that in a relatively short period of time the United States economy will be back.

Meanwhile, what's really significant in this day and age is the importance of many of the developing countries' economies which are growing stronger, which are proving very resilient to the U.S. slowdown.  They're not unaffected, but they're proving pretty resilient.  This is a new feature in the global economy.  It means that a slowdown in the U.S. doesn't necessarily spell total devastation for the world.  Thanks to India and China and Brazil and Korea and Taiwan and other economies that are tiding us over.

Question:  The U.S. President and his colleagues. [what were their comments]…on food prices [inaudible]?

Ambassador Mulford:  We issued a statement about that which I think you should review.  Effectively what I said was that President Bush is a great friend of India, a great supporter of India.  And I was very disturbed that his comments were seized on here, taken out of context and very superficial comments, hostile comments were made by people that in my view were totally unjustified and really are demeaning to the people who make those things because they fail to understand the complexity of the problem the President was referring to.  The components of the food crisis are dozens of issues that are interwoven together that are very hard to sort out.

So I think it would make a lot of sense if we sat down and worked together on these things instead of indulging in this kind of commentary.

Question:  How do you [justify…] the huge quantity of food [products devoted to the production of biofuels…]? 

Ambassador Mulford: Economists who have looked at that issue attribute about three percent of the price rise to the biofuels focus and the redirection of crops to that.  So it's a very small impact.  I personally think it's probably higher.  But it's not "the" reason for food price inflation in the world.  I think there has to be more serious analysis.

Question:  So it's not very good news as far as the [the price of oil] is concerned…  How do you see this?

Ambassador Mulford:  The cost of oil is a very serious problem for the global economy, for the United States as well as for India, for China, for everybody, which would suggest that we should be working together on that.  There are alternative fuels.  It would help, for example, to have a civil nuclear program in India over the years to diversity away from your current 72 percent dependence on imported petroleum products.  You have a huge coal supply here which needs to be technologically addressed to clean the coal.  We're helping with that.  It could move faster.  I'm sure it could be a higher priority to reach the point where that is used.  Alternative sources of energy are being explored and hopefully developed in the United States.

The biofuels thing, after all, was an effort initially, greatly approved by all the environmental people, as an alternative to oil.  Now all of a sudden it's blamed for all the food price increases.  You don't develop alternative sources overnight.  It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of capital.  And you learn as you're doing it that maybe you could do something more effectively than use corn.  Maybe use cellulose based products and so on.  But you don't get anywhere unless you work at these things in good faith.

That's why I think these short term, off the top of your head unfriendly comments are just completely unhelpful and bizarre.  They demonstrate a lack of thinking about how these problems are really solved, and I think the United States and India should work together in this area.  We already are, but we should work together more aggressively.

Question:  …We have a statement from America saying that this is the right thing to resolve the Kashmir issue.  How would the U.S. think that it is the right time for resolution of Kashmir when the fact of the matter is that Pakistan has violated the ceasefire…?

Ambassador Mulford:  I think United States policy is very clear on this question of India and Pakistan and Kashmir.  We have for many years now encouraged both sides to work together to improve their peaceful relationship.  We were especially active after the leadership of Prime Minister Vajpayee when he initiated this movement.  We have encouraged both sides to keep working at it because we know it's a very difficult issue.  We know it's a very emotional issue, and we know it has a lot of facets to it.  Therefore it will take application over time.

We're encouraging both sides but we are not the managers of the process, we're not the referees, we're not in the middle of it.  Therefore we've stayed to the side.

I think the President's statement was aimed at the fact that there has been an election in Pakistan, there is a new government, it is a democratically elected government, and we know that there will be a resumption of the peace effort, as indeed we've seen this week.  I think he was encouraging both parties to take a look at things and hope that they could work towards a solution that would maybe extend to Kashmir.  But we know that progress is made at the fringes on smaller things, and gradually you'll work towards perhaps the time when you can resolve bigger issues.  But I think his statement was meant to be an encouraging statement to both sides to enhance the process and work towards ultimately solving that problem.  I think that's how you should look at the statement.

Question:  We have in our neighborhood another democratically elected government that is in Nepal.  What is your perception of [the democratic] process coming to Nepal?

Ambassador Mulford:  We've made some statements on that.  I'm not the Ambassador in Nepal so you should look at their statements and the State Department's statements.  But we have watched that election, we've seen the outcome, and we've accepted the result of that election and they're working to sort of see what happens there. 

Question:  One question regarding China's action in Tibet.  To what extent the U.S. can go in order to save Tibet from China's repressive policy…?

Ambassador Mulford:  The United States has made clear its support for the people of Tibet and for the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamshala.  We have been supporters of that community since 1959.  And the President's been very clear in his statements.  He's encouraged the Chinese to engage with the Dalai Lama and his representatives.  He's encouraged them to work forward towards some arrangement that recognizes the greater autonomy of the Tibetan population.  Certainly [he wants to ensure] that their rights are protected and assured.  He's done that knowing that the Dalai Lama has formally indicated that he is not seeking independence for Tibet.  He is not fomenting a break-away revolution.  And he is seeking relative autonomy of their culture, their language and so on.  So the President has supported this and continues to.  The United States will continue to support that agenda.

Question:  [Are the U.S. and the U.N. one and the same…?]

Ambassador Mulford:  First of all I didn't anticipate such philosophical questions.  [Laughter].  I think if you ask people in the United States is the United States the UN, are they synonymous they would be very surprised by the question and they would not be very happy if your answer was that we were.  That's the best I can say on that.

My own personal view on the world is very strongly that the United States foreign policy since the 2nd World War has aimed at encouraging the development of other countries around the world.  Encouraging freedom, encouraging democracy, encouraging economic liberalization, encouraging open markets, open investment flows, and this has been the policy base of the United States for the very simple reason that that's an agenda which improves prosperity.  History tells us that.  The actual facts of open markets, growing world trade, easier foreign investment flows, higher growth levels.  This is how you work out of poverty.  This is how you create greater wealth.  If you can encourage the forces of democracy and economic liberalization you automatically enhance the prospects of peace in the world because people are engaged, occupied, feel they have something to say in their future and so on.  That has been the thrust of U.S. policy.

Therefore we have encouraged the development of other economic power centers.  It's happened.  The kind of world that we have today compared to after the 2nd World War when the United States completely held all the chips, dominated GNP and so on is utterly changed.  Our share of world GNP has fallen very sharply during those years.  Other countries have risen.  India is one of them, but not the only one.  That's been something the United States has favored, encouraged, worked towards, supported and helped finance.

When you talk about a world with many power points in it you need to be clear that we're talking here about all kinds of power.  Economic power, marketing power, purchasing power, political power, military power, and we have encouraged a diverse pluralistic world.  I think it's been one of the most successful policy initiatives in world history, that period of time.  It doesn't mean it's perfect, doesn't mean there's not a lot of problems,  there's military tensions and so on.  But it's been a remarkable period of prosperity and progress for everybody, including the United States.

Moderator:  Thank you, Ambassador, for answering all the questions of my colleagues over here.  We appreciate the time that you have given and always have been appreciative of the fact that America and India are strong allies and we look forward to… this relationship growing far more healthy than the Indian-Russian relationship.  We are very clear on that.

On the war of terror and the policy years, we do wish that the U.S. should see Pakistan as a force which is trying to threaten India and therefore not put both of us together and see us together as fighting on terror.  Because the war on terror for India and for Pakistan is entirely different.  That has been our stand from throughout, that the U.S. needs to visualize Pakistan separately from the war of terror and India separate.

That's what we stand for, but we really do appreciate the U.S. relationship that India is enjoying.  It's a very healthy relationship and the economic relationship is going great, and we expect that these issues which are coming up, what India is going to face in the next 10 to 12 years will be issues that we'll be able to resolve with the help of the U.S. and other developing countries.  Thank you.

Ambassador Mulford:  May I respond to this?  Because you raised a couple of questions that I think are important to respond to.

First of all, in the four years I've been here we have emphasized with the full support of the White House the de-hyphenation of the Indo-Pak relationship.  I think we've pretty well succeeded, based on the proposition that the United States has a freestanding bilateral relationship with India and a vision of the future that is a world vision for our two countries.

We also have a freestanding bilateral relationship with Pakistan which is a different vision.  It is not a world vision and it's very different.  Therefore, I don't think it's correct to say that we lump the two countries together because I think it's very clear that we don't.

Secondly, I think that in the point you made about working together, there are some areas that I'm surprised you didn't ask about today such as agriculture.   We have a view that when you look forward 10 or 15 years in India, one of the major challenges is what I call the transformation of the rural economy in India, which includes agriculture.  This is very important because a large majority of your people live in rural areas and the rural economy produces around 18 percent of the GDP.  So you have a very large body of people on a relatively smaller part of the pie, and that piece of the pie grows at 2.5 or 3.5 percent in an overall economic growth picture of 8 to 9 percent.  So on a relative basis, it's shrinking.  Add to that the fact that this is a true democracy and all the people vote. 

So there has to be found a solution by which the growth of globalization and opening of India which is being transmitted into the Indian economy is more widely shared, because otherwise there will be tensions.  Coalition governments have great difficulty addressing these issues quickly enough.

So that is one thing that drives us towards things like the Agricultural Knowledge Initiative where we are putting money and hopefully creating with India mechanisms that bring not only agricultural techniques as we did in the '60s and '70s, but more importantly, a private sector commercial application of new techniques in a way that helps the farmer now.  That's why we support the development of the retail sector including foreign direct investment in retail because we believe big retail players will build infrastructure back to the farm and will help in the transformation of the rural economy.  Because there's a huge possible population of businesses that would exist in the rural areas apart from farming that are linked to agriculture.  We know a lot about that because we have it in the United States.  What you needed for that is large capital investment, because farmers in this country with small pieces of land don't have large amounts of capital to invest. So there needs to be large investment.

We think that all areas of private activity that are interested in this should be encouraged and permitted to invest.  In other words, regulation should be changed to permit these things to happen as well as encourage them.

So working together in these areas is a very high priority, and we really have a tremendous shared agenda there that we're working on. 

In the military area where there's also some debate, the United States already has a very close relationship in terms of exchanging visitors back and forth between our services, joint exercises, the sharing of information, the sharing of intelligence information and so on.  When it comes to military equipment, we want to increase our presence here, but we're also encouraged to by India because India wants top of the line technologies in the military area and we have those in large part…

We already see India as a major, independent partner in the world, not an ally as you suggested because we do not have formal allied agreements with India.  And India is quite clear that it wants a relationship but not an alliance.  We accept that.

The increasing level of commitment, interoperability and military forces, common communication arrangements and so on that work to make more effective responses to cyclones, natural disasters, as well as military exercises, all of this is of a very high priority.  We feel this is developing in a very significant and important way to the benefit of both of us.

I think this is what I mean by the broad relationship.  It doesn't all turn on civil nuclear.  But I have to say on civil nuclear in the last few months things have begun to appear that make me feel the case for civil nuclear is stronger and stronger and stronger.

One, China has made clear a very significant commitment to the development of its own civil nuclear industry.  It sees it as a key part of its future growth and development. 

Two, it has indicated it's going to work with Pakistan to help develop a civil nuclear industry there.

Your own civil nuclear industry has a shortage of fuel, has indicated that it's about 50 percent short.  And although it's increased the number of plants, the results reported by the civil nuclear industry are disappointing.

Then you have electricity development here, dependence on one source of power.

All of this suggests that this really is an urgent problem as a matter of national interest to address, and it seems to me the case is getting stronger.  So we really hope that this does come together.

Question:  One final small comment.  Do you see the Indo-U.S. relationships as a counter-balance to the great power of China?

Ambassador Mulford:  No, that's not, I won't say it's not relevant, it has some relevance, but that is not the motivation for the relationship.

Historically, if you look at the U.S.-India relationship, since 1947 there's been I would say a rather strong affection, but until 1991 there were all kinds of tensions, distrusts, up and down developments.  My view is that was a function of different basic interests because of the kind of economy you ran, because you were a closed economy with high foreign tariffs, limitations on investment, a close partnership with the Soviet Union, a managed economy, a substitution economy.  And all of that has changed now.  Huge investment flows in, even bigger going out now.  And since 1991 you have a rising body of similar interests and similar interests are what generally govern relations between nations which explains why without a formal agreement or alliance or anything like that we have many more common interests.

So if you look at this part of the world, the United States and India are both democracies.  They both run open economies.  They both believe in growth and improving the prosperity of their people, high levels of freedom, and individual tolerance.  So all of these things go together in a way that makes the United States feel that one-sixth of humanity is in India -- India is a key part of the future for the United States...

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