Inderfurth coming on farewell visit

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI, NOV. 24. The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Karl Inderfurth, will arrive here early next week for what is being seen as a farewell call on his Indian interlocutors.

Mr. Inderfurth, a political appointee of the U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton, is expected to leave office when the term of the present administration ends in the third week of January, 2001.

His four-year watch at the South Asia Bureau has seen a positive transformation of U.S. relations with India. His tenure in 1997 began with a commitment from Mr. Clinton to pay more attention to India, and the beginning of a ``strategic dialogue'' between the two nations.

India's nuclear tests in May 1998 angered the Clinton administration which imposed sanctions against New Delhi.

The bitterness was overcome quickly as the two sides began a nuclear dialogue that helped minimise and manage the differences over non-proliferation.

The final year of the Clinton administration saw the first visit to India by a U.S. President in over two decades and a return visit to Washington by the Prime Minister in less than six months. As a result, both sides now say there is a ``qualitatively new and better'' relationship.

Mr. Inderfurth is expected to arrive here from Sri Lanka and is likely to head for Nepal.

Significantly, he will not visit Pakistan in his final official call on South Asian capitals.

The relations between Washington and Islamabad are now in an uncertain phase with the U.S. putting Pakistan on notice for its support to the Taliban in Afghanistan and nurturing the forces of extremism and international terrorism.

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