U.S. long feared India arms-sale snags, cable shows

Timothy Roemer, the U.S. Ambassador to India, recently resigned from his post

The United States has fretted for years that its ties to Pakistan and past sanctions against India would harm its efforts to win arms deals such as the $11 billion fighter order that slipped away from two U.S. suppliers in April this year, a U.S. diplomatic cable showed.

"Our ability to seize the opportunities presented by this newly improved environment is limited by the commonly held view that the U.S. will not prove to be a reliable supplier of defense equipment," Timothy Roemer, the U.S. ambassador to India, said in an October 29, 2009 cable to Michele Flournoy, a top Pentagon official then about to visit India. Following India’s decision, Roemer resigned stating that he was leaving his post for professional and family reasons. "The new environment" reference in his 2009 cable concerned the emergence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government with "a clear mandate not beholden to coalition partners" for the first time since post-Cold War U.S.-Indian strategic ties took shape.

A French Rafale fighter jet seen from the rear of a Boeing C-135 on March 11, during NATO's military actions over Libya

U.S. officials from President Barack Obama down subsequently pushed hard to sell U.S. fighter jets to India to crown expanding security ties. The United States also is eyeing tens of billions of dollars in other potential arms deals with India, the cable showed. Lockheed and Boeing Rejected In the end, India ruled out U.S aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Lockheed Martin from contention for a $10bn contract to supply combat planes to the country's military, leaving the multinational company Eurofighter and France's Dassault Aviation to bid for the contract, Indian Defense Ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar confirmed.

"Boeing and Lockheed have been eliminated in the elimination round (of the bidding)," Kar said and added that the process to acquire advanced fighter jets may be completed by the end of the current fiscal year. Lockheed Martin's F-16 and Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet did not meet the Indian air force's technical requirements, a Defense Ministry source told mediapersons.

India also ruled out Sweden's Saab JAS-39 and Russia's MiG-35, departing from a longrunning reliance on Russian aircraft for its air force and short-listed two European suppliers in a move that could delay closer strategic ties with the United States.

Defense sources said the Indian Defense Ministry had reduced a field of six aircraft to two -- the Eurofighter made by Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain, and France's Rafale. Lockheed and Boeing are the Pentagon's No. 1 and No. 2 supplier, respectively. Each is pressing to boost sales in India, which plans to spend about $50 billion in the next five years to modernize old Soviet-era weapons and technology.

U.S. competitors use the economic sanctions imposed by Washington after Indian nuclear tests in 1998 to try to harm U.S. sales prospects, the cable said. "They also point to our close defense relationship with Pakistan as rationale that the U.S. should not be trusted," Roemer wrote in the message obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and made available to Reuters news agency by a third party. The cable cited one unnamed source as saying the Indian army will never put U.S. equipment in divisions facing Pakistan, India's historic foe, "because they expect the U.S. will stop military supplies in the event of Indo-Pak hostilities."

Deeply Disappointed The U.S. Defense Department has said it was "deeply disappointed" by rejection of the U.S. bid to supply 126 new fighter aircraft. Instead, India set up a contest between France's Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon made by Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain. "We look forward to continuing to grow and develop our defense partnership with India," said Navy Commander Leslie Hull-Ryde, a Pentagon spokeswoman, "and remain convinced that the United States offers our defense partners around the globe the world's most advanced and reliable technology."

She said U.S. officials were closely studying Indian-provided documentation on the shortlisting decision, and looked forward to a full "debrief" from the Indian Air Force. A State Department spokeswoman, Heide Fulton, declined to comment on Roemer's 2009 cable as a matter of policy. A senior State Department official said the United States was not aware of any allegations of impropriety "so far" in the fighter matter. The full field included the two American planes, three Europeans and a Russian model. Asked about the possible impact of any Indian concerns over U.S. reliability as a supplier, the official said the elimination of Boeing and Lockheed seemed to be based on technical considerations.

"I think, if anything, the concerns are that it was only made on that basis and without looking at the wider strategic implications of this," the official said. In the past three years, India has agreed to buy some $10 billion in U.S. military hardware including six Lockheed C-130J military transport planes and eight long-range Boeing P-8 maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft.

- [ BY JIM WOLF ]