Joe Biden’s nominee for next envoy to New
Delhi has told lawmakers that the growing defence trade between India and the
US is one of the major success stories of the bilateral relation.

Eric Michael Garcetti, 50, is currently
serving as the Mayor of Los Angeles and is a personal confidant of Biden.
Garcetti, during his confirmation hearing as US Ambassador to India, said that
he fully supports the law of the land, the implementation of CAATSA and part of
that is the waiver provision.

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He was responding to a question on
enforcement of CAATSA sanctions on India now that New Delhi has started
receiving delivery of the S-400 missile system from Russia.

“I don’t want to prejudge the
Secretary’s decision about sanctions or a waiver. And I do want to tell the
Chairman, Ranking Member (and) all the members (of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee) I do fully support the law of the land, the implementation of CAATSA
as law here and part of that is the waiver provision,” Garcetti said.

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The Los Angeles Mayor said, if confirmed,
he would advocate the continued diversification of India’s weapons system, the
threats to US own weapons systems.

“If that diversification doesn’t occur
because we have to protect our data and our systems,” he said, adding that
he would work towards growing the India-US Major Defence Partnership. “I
think it is one of the great success stories of the last few decades from zero
to USD 20 billion in procurement, the intelligence sharing that we have, the
interoperability, the exercises, the maritime work that we’re doing,” he
said.

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India is the only designated Major Defence
Partner of the United States.

Having completed four major defence
enabling agreements since 2016, the United States and India have made
significant progress as major defence partners and the US looks forward to
strengthening information sharing,
bilateral and multilateral exercises, maritime security cooperation, liaison
officer exchanges, and logistical cooperation.

Responding to queries related to human
rights in India, Garcetti assured the lawmakers that he would personally be
talking to various stakeholders in India on this issue.

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“I would not only just bring it up,
but it would not be something at the end as an obligation. It will be a core
piece of what I’ll be engaging my Indian counterparts have confirmed
with,” he said.

“There’s no question that the US India
relationship should be underpinned by our common commitment to democracy, human
rights and to civil society…If confirmed, I will actively raise these issues.
I’ll raise them with humility. It’s a two-way street on these, but I intend to
engage directly with civil society,” he said.

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“There are groups that are actively
fighting for the human rights of people on the ground in India that will get
direct engagement from me. We know that democracies are complicated and we can
look at our own and at India’s, but it’s a cornerstone of our shared
values,” Mr Garcetti said.