[ Listen to a recording of Boucher's Q&A with Nik Deogun, courtesy of DesiYou.com ]
Speaking with the Wall St. Journal's Nikhil Deogun at today's Newsmaker Q&A, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher says the civil nuclear program with India is gaining progress and hopefully will reach the Senate for decision.
“This program would be good for India in terms of funding clean energy,” he said. He feels that the recent terrorist bombings in Mumbai railway should not be a hindrance to the nuclear deal. As for Pakistan, Boucher showed enough confidence in the progress in diplomatic relations between these two countries.
“They have to fight terrorism together,” he said. “They should look at these terror events not as a reason to fall back but come together.” Boucher assured the capacity audience of about 120 people that United States would continue to play the role of a cheerleader as long as the two statesmen continue to improve the relations between their countries.
Boucher has served at the State Department under six secretaries of State and held his position in South Asia and Central Asia during February. He was the US ambassador to Cyrus and the consul general in Hong Kong.
Boucher explained his interests in the South and Central Asian region, particularly in the natural synergy between these two areas.
“There is abundance of raw materials in Central Asia and there is a great market in countries like India and Pakistan,” he said. Boucher is ambitious about the energy and trade flow from Central Asian region to Pakistan and eventually to India.
Having spent numerous years in China, Boucher does not feel that it serves any purpose to compare the Indian and Chinese economies. Nonetheless, he did give an assessment.
“There is a lot of competition in investment. There is a lot of compatibility and competition between the two markets.” According to Boucher, China has the smoothness in investment decisions while India has some bureaucratic restrictions. “But India has an open information policy and it has done more than China to open up its internal market,” he said.
After the interview with Deogun, Boucher answered several questions from participating journalists and students about issues in Indo-Pak relations, Maoist insurgency and democracy in Nepal and visa crisis in Pakistan. One questioner, an immigrant rights advocate, held forth on the U.S. consulate in Chennai and its seemingly arbitrary rejections of many applicants. What, she asked, was the State Department doing to make things better? On this, Boucher had no answer, except to say that the job of processing applications was difficult.
