U.S., India discuss future in space
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, June 19, 2004
BANGALORE, India – India wants its space agency removed from a U.S. list limiting high-tech exports to India as the two nations prepare to meet next week to explore ways their space programs can work together.
Starting Monday, the five-day meeting will bring together nearly 150 U.S. scientists, government officials and business leaders with their Indian counterparts in the southern city of Bangalore, the home of the Indian Space Research Organization, India’s equivalent of NASA.
“This is an exploratory meeting to get to know each other better, to stimulate high-tech commerce and to find common ground between the space road maps of both the countries,” said organization chairman G. Madhavan Nair in Bangalore.
In recent years, India has developed rockets able to place satellites into orbit. At the same time, it has produced short-and medium-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear payloads and hitting targets in neighboring Pakistan or China.
Worries over missile and nuclear proliferation have caused the U.S. Commerce Department to clamp down on so-called “dual use” technology exports – such as parts for rocket guidance systems and engines, items that Washington believes could be diverted from civilian to military use.
Those fears were heightened in 1998 by a series of tit-for-tat underground nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan. At the time, the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on both countries, most of which have since been lifted.
The meeting follows talks three months ago between Secretary of State Colin Powell and then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee aimed at boosting high-technology trade, while protecting U.S. security concerns.
The rules require American companies to obtain special export licenses and approval from the Department of Commerce before sending sensitive items to organizations on the list, such as the Indian Space Research Organization, www.isro.org.
“The sanctions caused some difficulty in getting components for our projects, but we managed with alternative means,” Nair said..
