India seeks eased U.S. controls on sales of its defense technologies

India’s defense minister, Arackaparambil Kurian Antony, will meet with U.S. defense, State Department and national security officials Tuesday. (Associated Press)

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India’s defense minister says U.S. export controls that restrict the sale of defense technologies to blacklisted Indian entities are a “matter of concern” and should be lifted soon.

Ahead of his meetings in Washington this week, Arackaparambil Kurian Antony said he wants an “early solution” to the restrictions that have been an irritant in an otherwise robust U.S.-India defense relationship.

The minister cited the inclusion of Indian institutions on the Entity List and U.S. defense sales to Pakistan as key concerns, according to a Press Trust of India report.

Mr. Antony will meet Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and National Security Adviser James L. Jones on Tuesday.

The Entity List, published by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, is intended to inform the public of entities that have engaged in activities that could result in an increased risk of the diversion of exported technology to weapons of mass destruction programs.

Indian groups on this list include subordinates of the Defense Research and Development Organization and Indian Space Research Organization, and Department of Atomic Energy entities, including the Bhabha Atomic Research Center.

They were placed on the list after India, which is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, conducted nuclear tests in 1998.

Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said U.S. export controls are understandably a sore point in the relationship, but the situation has changed dramatically in the past five years and these restrictions have been reduced to a minor problem.

“I believe it ought to be possible to remove many of the institutions that are now on the entities list, and I hope this happens,” Mrs. Schaffer said. “The United States has already decided to permit civilian nuclear trade with India in spite of India’s having nuclear weapons; the logic of that decision ought to permit most of the ‘entities’ to be removed.”

She said it is up to India to decide how to meet the U.S. need to protect classified information or equipment supplied in an arms transfer.

Mr. Gates, at a Pentagon briefing last week, said this matter is “high on our list … I would like to see those restrictions eased.”

Mrs. Clinton and Indian Foreign Minister Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna discussed export controls in their meeting in New York on Monday.

Robert O. Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, said in a conference call with reporters that the two sides were looking to find a “positive way forward.”

“We are not quite there yet and so we need to continue to work on that,” Mr. Blake said, adding that he was confident of a positive outcome.

“The export controls and the inclusion on entities list is a significant problem and it has been an impediment, but not a huge one,” said Walter Andersen, associate director of the South Asia studies program at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

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