NEW DELHI: American aircraft and warships will soon be able to get regular access to Indian military bases for refuelling, repair and other logistical purposes, which will further tighten the India-US strategic clinch as well as help Washington in its ongoing “re-balance” of 60% of its naval forces to the Asia Pacific to counter an increasingly assertive China.

Signalling the NDA government's major shift from the previous UPA regime's diffidence towards such pacts, defence minister Manohar Parrikar and his US counterpart Ash Carter on Tuesday announced the two countries “have agreed in principle” to share military logistics, which will now lead to the inking of the bilateral Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) within a couple of months.

Top Indian officials took pains to clarify the “reciprocal” logistics pact was just meant to facilitate military cooperation, especially for the flurry of bilateral combat exercises as well as humanitarian aid operations in the region, and was not aimed at forging any sort of a military alliance against China.

India and the US will now also further bolster maritime security cooperation, which will include stepping up the complexity of its combat exercises and talks on anti-submarine warfare, but there are no plans for any joint naval patrols in the contentious South China Sea or elsewhere. “India has not changed its stand (on joint patrols),” said Parrikar.

Both Parrikar and Carter stressed LEMOA did not entail stationing of any US troops on Indian soil, even as officials also added that India will also not extend support in event of any US military action against “friendly countries”. “We can refuse access to our bases whenever we want. Under LEMOA, we will also get access to US bases like Djibouti and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean region,” said an official.

But it does represent overturning of the policy of the previous UPA regime, which had steadfastly stonewalled the US push for India to ink the so-called “foundational agreements” on logistics as well as the Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum Agreement (CISMOA) and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial Cooperation (BECA) for well over a decade.

The then defence minister A K Antony, backed by the Left and others, had opposed the three foundational pacts on the grounds that they would “compromise” India’s traditional strategic autonomy and give “basing rights” to the US military in the country.

While the Modi government still has some reservations against CISMOA and BECA, it says India and the US are institutionalising through LEMOA what already happens “on a case-to-case basis”, as was earlier reported by TOI.

The LEMOA or LSA (Logistics Support Agreement), modelled on the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreements the US has inked with scores of its military allies and other countries, envisages Indian and American militaries providing logistic support, refuelling and berthing facilities for each other's warships and aircraft on a barter or an equal-value exchange basis.

Carter, who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and national security advisor Ajit Doval later in the day, said LEMOA will make it “more routine and automatic” for the Indian and American forces to operate together. “We have agreed in principle that all the issues are resolved. The text will now be finalised,” he said.

India, of course, has its own concerns about the expanding Chinese naval forays into the Indian Ocean region, which includes its nuclear and conventional submarines popping up from Sri Lanka to Pakistan regularly.

Though China has also needled India in the South China Sea, New Delhi would still like to be seen as a non-aligned player in the geopolitical shadow-boxing between Washington and Beijing in the Asia Pacific.

India and US, however, miss no opportunity to stress the need for all (read China) to respect the freedom of navigation in international waters, right of passage and overflight, unimpeded commerce and access to resources in accordance with the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Parrikar, incidentally, is slated to go on his maiden visit to China on April 18, as was earlier reported by TOI.



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