CAATSA sanctions on India would be extraordinarily foolhardy: Senator Cruz

Washington, Mar 8(PTI): Any sanctions on India under the punitive Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) for buying S-400 missile from Russia would be “extraordinarily foolhardy”, a top Republican Senator has told the Biden Administration.

“There are reports that the Biden administration is contemplating imposing CAATSA sanctions against India, the largest democracy on Earth, a decision that I think would be extraordinarily foolhardy,” Senator Ted Cruz said during a hearing on pending nominations by the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Over the last one week, Cruz, who represents the State of Texas in the United States Senate, has said that the bilateral relationship between India and the United States has deteriorated under the Biden Administration.

“India is a critical ally across a number of areas, and the US-India alliance has broadened and deepened in recent years. But under the Biden administration, it’s gone backwards,” Cruz said. “India is not the only country to have voted against us, and against condemning Russia,” he said observing India’s abstention in the United Nations General Assembly vote condemning Putin’s aggression.

“The United Arab Emirates also abstained in yesterday’s vote. The UAE is a close ally of the United States, and during the Trump administration, was a critical player in the Abraham Accords that fundamentally transformed the entire Middle East, and brought Israelis and Arabs together under American leadership,” he said. At a different hearing by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Cruz said that in the past year under the Biden administration Relations with India have worsened significantly.

This was manifested among other things in their latest abstention at the United Nations, he told Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Donald Lu. “I will acknowledge that India and the United States have not voted the same at the United Nations over this past week. I assure you that we continue to have an important dialogue with India at the highest levels to try to narrow that gap and to help India to see the importance that we place on a coordinated message to Moscow,” Lu said.

Over the weekend Cruz tweeted that the Biden administration is very, very slowly discovering that alienating allies and boosting enemies is not a great way to conduct foreign policy. “All it took were several generational global catastrophes and wars abroad, and 1970s inflation and gas prices at home.”

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