Logistics pact with US not for bases: Manohar Parrikar

NEW DELHI: Defence minister Manohar Parrikar has said that the pact India signed for sharing military logistics with the US was not an agreement for America to set up bases here, dispelling doubts raised by the Opposition that it would hamper strategic autonomy.

He was speaking in Washington after signing the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement ( Lemoa), signed after over a decade of discussion. The pact facilitates provision of supplies like fuel, spare parts, medical assistance and food to visiting warships, aircraft or personnel from either country but does not provide for permanent or even temporary basing facilities.

The agreement, however, falls well short of arrangements after the 1962 war with China, when the US deployed spy planes and operated transport aircraft from Indian soil for several years, after a fervent appeal for assistance by then PM Jawaharlal Nehru. Declassified records and historic correspondence between Nehru and then US President John Kennedy show in the 1960s, the US had a forward-staging base in India for its U-2 spy planes that flew missions over China and that a dozen American transport aircraft were stationed in India for several months to airlift troops to the China border.

There have also been disclosures by an Indian mountaineer that secret, joint missions were carried out with the CIA to plant monitoring devices on Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot to monitor nuclear tests being carried out by China in the 1960s.




The report, declassified in 2013, reveals how Nehru used information gathered by the U-2 aircraft to inform Parliament on Chinese movements. In response to an urgent call by Nehru, the US had rushed ‘Hercules’ C-130 aircraft to deploy troops to Ladakh and Assam during the 1962 war.