US, India eager for an ally to counterbalance a rising China, appear ready to try to look past assassination
\nWASHINGTON
\nA brazen murder-for-hire plot against a US citizen, which authorities say was directed by an Indian government official, outwardly seems like a development that could upend the fragile new US-India partnership.
\nBut the countries – each eager for an ally to counterbalance a rising China – appear ready to try to look past the assassination attempt detailed in an US indictment released on Wednesday.
\nFederal prosecutors in Manhattan said the unnamed Indian official, whose responsibilities include security and intelligence, and Indian national Nikhil Gupta, 52, plotted this summer to kill a New York City resident who advocated for a sovereign Sikh state in northern India.
\nThey did so – exchanging messages with an undercover DEA agent about the planned assassination – even as President Joe Biden was honoring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a state visit to the White House on June 22.
\nUS officials, after learning about the plot in late July, demanded that India investigate, a senior administration official said. Biden dispatched his CIA chief to New Delhi and raised the issue with Modi during a September summit, outlining \u201cthe potential repercussions for our bilateral relationship were similar threats to persist,\u201d the official said.
\nRead India to probe US concerns linking it to foiled murder plot
\nHigh-level meetings and pledges of closer cooperation have continued, with Biden\u2019s secretaries of state and defense visiting Delhi this month. When details of the plot appeared this week the US released a measured statement.
\nA senior US administration official called the assassination plot a \u201cserious matter\u201d and said Washington expects India to stop such activities, even as the Biden administration pursues \u201can ambitious agenda to expand our cooperation\u201d with India.
\nThe US response reflects a desire not to let the issue damage the broader relationship, foreign policy experts said.
\n\u201cThe Biden administration appears to be seeking to compartmentalize this issue from the rest of the strategic relationship,\u201d said Lisa Curtis, a former senior director for South and Central Asia at the White House\u2019s National Security Council.
\nBiden has made a priority of nurturing ties with India, hoping to counter China\u2019s ambitions in Asia while drawing India away from Russia as the US seeks to isolate Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
\n\u2018They need each other\u2019
\nSo far, the New York assassination plot has played out very differently from a similar case in Canada this year.
\nRead Indian diplomat flees New York Gurdwara over assassination plot allegations
\nCanada said in September there were \u201ccredible\u201d allegations linking Indian agents to the June murder of another Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in a Vancouver suburb.
\nIndia angrily rejected Canada\u2019s claim, sparking a diplomatic row that saw expulsions of diplomats by both sides, and New Delhi threatened to scupper trade talks.
\nBy contrast, India\u2019s response to the US indictment on Wednesday was conciliatory, saying it was taking the case seriously and investigating.
\n\u201cIndia doesn\u2019t share a strategic partnership with Canada, which it does with the US\u201d said Happymon Jacob, an Indian foreign policy expert at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. \u201cBoth the US and India realize that they need each other, perhaps the US a bit more than India.\u201d
\nThe Biden administration\u2019s overtures to Modi were already controversial, with some arguing that the Indian leader\u2019s Hindu nationalism and authoritarian instincts made him an unreliable partner.
\nActivists hold Modi responsible for religious riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died. Modi was denied a US visa in 2005 under a US law that bars entry to foreigners who have committed \u201cparticularly severe violations of religious freedom.\u201d
\nRead more Indian govt official directed Sikh separatist\u2019s assassination plot in US, DOJ says
\nThe June summit was Modi\u2019s first state visit to the US, despite taking office in 2014. Sitting alongside Modi in the White House, Biden hailed a relationship \u201cbuilt on mutual trust, candor, and respect.\u201d
\nRichard Rossow, an India specialist at Washington\u2019s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that from the announced timeline of the alleged plot, the Biden Administration would have known about it well ahead of a series of significant high-level engagements.
\n\u201cSo, based on its own merits this issue is not enough to derail ties even if it generated some underlying level of tension,\u201d he said.
\nAshley Tellis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that although the Biden administration \u201chas bent backwards to avoid a public spat with Delhi,\u201d the issues of sovereignty involved in attack on a US citizen inside the United States would be troubling to US officials.
\n\u201cI think the bilateral relationship will survive this fiasco,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it will reinforce the qualms of many who believe that the claims about shared values between the US and India are simply mythology.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US, India eager for an ally to counterbalance a rising China, appear ready to try to look past assassination WASHINGTON A brazen murder-for-hire plot against a US citizen, which authorities say was directed by an Indian government official, outwardly seems like a development that could upend the fragile new US-India partnership. But the countries – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n