American pilots at the Kalaikunda air base in Bengal, where they held wargames with India in 2005

New Delhi, July 28: The defence ministry has asked its officials and the armed forces to put daylight between successive engagements with the US.

In a move that may draw two cheers from the Left, the ministry has issued an advisory asking officials to “space out” interactions with the Pentagon.

But the defence ministry is pursuing joint programmes with Israel, the Left’s other bugbear, with rare gusto.

Both ? the intensive relations with US and with Israel ? were begun during the NDA regime when George Fernandes was the defence minister and so far the UPA government has pursued the same policy.

The advisory now asks for a slow-down of the process despite the civilian nuclear deal being cut with the US and also in preparation for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s anticipated visit to Cuba for the non-aligned nations’ summit in September.

“From time to time, the ministry of defence makes its own internal assessments (of foreign exchanges). This is to ensure that interactions with a particular country do not get bunched,” a senior official explained.

“We want that efforts are made to space out the interactions so that more number of countries are included in our discussions. The idea is to broadbase foreign cooperation.”

The advisory was issued by the joint secretary (planning and international cooperation), Debnath Shaw, the foreign service officer deputed to the defence ministry by the ministry of external affairs. It was issued after the government concluded that interactions (dialogues, training programmes, exchanges and exercises) with the US ? with Russia coming a distant second ? were too many in number and too frequent.

Services headquarters has established separate foreign cooperation cells since the exchanges with the US began and Washington began making offers to sell arms and military knowhow since 2002.

In the three years since, the army, the navy, the air force and defence officials have had at least one interaction a month with US counterparts.

The India-US military relationship has also been institutionalised through a Defence Policy Group and the India-US Framework Agreement on Defence signed by defence minister Pranab Mukherjee during his visit to the US last June.

Washington is also expecting large military orders from India (such as that for 126 multi-role combat aircraft) as a spin-off from the civilian nuclear deal that is now being processed.

The immediate reason for the advisory is the feedback its diplomatic missions had received from “level two” countries, mostly European nations who have got the sense that India was cultivating its military relations with the US at the cost of ties with them. The European countries, such as the UK, Germany and France, have been longer and steadier defence partners of India with France also continuing with supplies despite embargoes imposed after the 1998 nuclear tests.

Exchanges with Russia are but natural because nearly 65 per cent of India’s military hardware is sourced from the former Soviet Union.

Israel is a distant second to Russia but an emergent force among suppliers of military equipment to India.