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Rajnath calls up US counterpart as Trump admin's CAATSA sanctions on Turkey worries India

India’s big-ticket defence deals with Russia makes it vulnerable to the US sanctions under CAATSA – the same law that US invoked to impose sanctions on Turkey
Last Updated 16 December 2020, 01:57 IST

The move by President Donald Trump’s administration in Washington DC to impose sanctions on Turkey for buying S-400 Triumf air defence systems from Russia triggered concerns in New Delhi, prompting Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to call up his acting counterpart in the US, Christopher C Miller, on Tuesday.

Singh told Miller that India-US defence partnership “matured into a strategic nature over the last decade”. “The year 2020 was a landmark year in the India-US defence relationship,” he tweeted, after speaking to his counterpart.

The defence minister called up his US counterpart amid concerns in New Delhi, where many saw in Trump Administration’s move to slap sanctions on Turkey as a not-so-subtle warning to India, which too inked a Rs 39,000 crore deal to buy the S-400 Triumf long-range surface-to-air missile systems from Almaz-Antey Corporation of Russia in October 2018 and the delivery is expected to start in 2021.

The US on Monday also asked “other countries” to take note and avoid acquisition of military hardware from Russia. “A strong foundation has been laid for the India-US relations over the years,” Singh told Millers, citing several bilateral deals

the two nations inked since 2016 to boost bilateral defence cooperation. He apparently sought to drive home the point that any attempt by the Trump Administration to browbeat New Delhi and stop it from buying weapon systems from Russia would have an impact on India-US defence cooperation and the deepening strategic convergence between the two nations in the Indo-Pacific region.

Not only the S-400 missile systems, the ongoing military stand-off along the disputed India-China boundary in eastern Ladakh also prompted New Delhi earlier this year to fast-track purchase of MiG-29 and Su-30 MKI fighter aircraft from Russia.

The procurement of the 21 MiG 29s from Russia and upgrading the 59 previously acquired aircraft would cost India approximately Rs 7418 crore. The 12 Su-30 MKIs would be manufactured by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in India under license from Sukhoi Aviation JSC of Russia, involving an expenditure of Rs 10730 crore.

India’s big-ticket defence deals with Russia makes it vulnerable to the US sanctions under Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) – the same law that the Trump Administration invoked to impose sanctions on Turkey.

The US Congress in July 2017 passed the CAATSA to impose sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea. Trump signed it into law in August 2017 and its scope was further expanded in October 2017. The Section 231 of the CAATSA mandated secondary sanctions to any nation entering into high-value deals to procure military hardware from Russia.

New Delhi has been discussing with the US, arguing for exemption from the US sanctions mandated by the CAATSA. The Trump Administration, however, remained non-committal, underlining that the CAATSA itself had no provision for exemptions for India or any other particular country entering into a defence deal with Russia and the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, would take calls on imposing sanctions mandated by the 2017 Act or granting exemptions on a case-to-case basis.

“We hope that other countries around the world will also take note that the United States will fully implement CAATSA Section 231 sanctions and that they should avoid further acquisitions of Russian equipment, especially those that could trigger sections,” Christopher Ford, the American Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation, said after announcing the sanctions on Turkey on Monday.

Trump fired his Secretary of Defence Mark Esper and replaced him with Miller soon after most of the TV networks called the US presidential elections and declared his defeat to Joe Biden. Esper had accompanied US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to New Delhi for the India-US 2+2 talks with Singh and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on October 27 last.

Though the Trump Administration is now on his way out, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is still worried over the possibility of it making any move within the next few weeks to impose the CAATSA sanctions on India to stop it from buying weapons from Russia.

Besides, New Delhi is of the view that the possibility of the US using the CAATSA sanctions to put pressure on India and to make it stop buying military hardware from Russia might continue to loom large even after the change of guard in the White House, given Biden’s tough stand on Vladimir Putin’s regime in Moscow.

Putin’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, last week publicly accused the US of putting “very tough pressure” on India to make it curtail its decades-old defence ties with Russia.

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(Published 15 December 2020, 19:02 IST)

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