State Department Spokesman Adam Ereli

Nov. 23 –– The State Department stoutly defended U.S. policy of selling sophisticated military weaponry to Pakistan while at the same time building closer relations with India.

State Department spokesperson Adam Ereli, questioned about the dichotomy high-level Indian officials have expressed to the Bush administration, implied arms sales to Pakistan were a commercial venture and it was not Washington’s concern that they may be used against India.

“There is no contradiction between having strong, good relations with India and meeting the defense needs of other countries through the sale of U.S. arms. Our arms sales policy, I think, is clear, governed by U.S. interests and congressional legislation, it’s transparent, it’s publicly notified, and we’ve done that in the case of the recent transactions in question,” asserted Ereli

He added that “So there should –– I think there should be no question that you can have good relations with one country and sell arms to another country. It’s not a mutually exclusive proposition, and nor should it be.”

But when asked if by the same token, would Washington have any objection if India bought arms from other countries such as France or Russia, the State Department spokesperson seemed to back up a bit.

“Again, I mean, as a general proposition, our view is countries are free to buy arms from whatever their source. The question is what –– you know, what is the purpose of those acquisitions? What does that represent for the strategic balance in the region? And that’s how we evaluate these sort of things,” Ereli qualified, essentially defining the U.S. arms sales policy as one of having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too.

The spokesperson also dismissed any thought that U.S.-India relations had suffered following the Bush administration’s recent announcement that it planned to sell more than one billion dollars of sophisticated weapons to Pakistan, and the Congress passing the $300 million military aid package to Islamabad.

“We did not intend to suggest that somehow relations were not good and went from a position of being less than excellent to something better than that,” he said about a press release on Nov. 22 that outlined the bare bones of the meeting between State Department South Asia Bureau Chief Christina Rocca and India’s Ministry of External Affairs head of the Americas division Shyam Saran.

“Our relations –– I think what the statement was trying to underscore is that we have a very strong bilateral relationship with India, that our level of cooperation in a variety of fields is intensive and mutually beneficial, and that the meeting in question contributed to that overall –– that overall condition,” Ereli clarified.