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OO RUEHAST RUEHBI RUEHCI RUEHDBU RUEHHM RUEHLH RUEHLN RUEHMA RUEHNEH
RUEHPB RUEHPOD RUEHPW RUEHTM RUEHTRO
DE RUEHNE #0531/01 0791214
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 201214Z MAR 09
FM AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 5830
INFO RUCNCLS/ALL SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIA COLLECTIVE
RUEHZN/ENVIRONMENT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COLLECTIVE
RUEHGB/AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD 0104
RUEHBK/AMEMBASSY BANGKOK 7249
RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING 7482
RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA 0364
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RUEHIL/AMEMBASSY ISLAMABAD 5895
RUEHML/AMEMBASSY MANILA 1832
RUEHMO/AMEMBASSY MOSCOW 3214
RUEHNE/AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI
RUEHOT/AMEMBASSY OTTAWA 0799
RUEHTV/AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV 0671
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO 6182
RUEHNEH/AMCONSUL HYDERABAD 0372
RUEHCI/AMCONSUL KOLKATA 3668
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RUEHBI/AMCONSUL MUMBAI 3493
RUEHPW/AMCONSUL PESHAWAR 4937
RUEHGH/AMCONSUL SHANGHAI 0212
RUEHLN/AMCONSUL ST PETERSBURG 0004
RUEHRC/DEPT OF AGRICULTURE WASHDC
RHEBAAA/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHINGTON DC
RUEHC/DEPT OF LABOR WASHDC
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHDC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RHMCSUU/FBI WASHINGTON DC

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 NEW DELHI 000531 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR CA/VO/L/C, CA/P, L, ISN/CB, SCA/INS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: CMGT CVIS ECON PREL BEXP TSPA IN
SUBJECT: PREYING MANTIS? NEW DELHI WEIGHS IN ON SAO DELAYS 
 
REF: A. BEIJING 687 
     ¶B. MOSCOW 578 
 
NEW DELHI 00000531  001.2 OF 004 
 
 
¶1. (U)  This is an action request for the Department; see 
paragraph 13 
 
¶2. (SBU) Summary: This cable joins those of Missions Beijing 
(ref A), Moscow (ref B) and others to emphasize the serious 
burden the Visas Mantis Security Advisory Opinion (SAO) 
processing system has imposed on American businesses and USG 
invitees. The SAO's lengthy processing is not only a major 
irritant to bilateral cooperation in key areas such as 
science, space, bio and information technology, and 
intellectual property rights, but has in many cases seriously 
compromised U.S. competitiveness in these fields.  Processing 
delays have forced the rescheduling, postponement and even 
cancellation of a variety of USG programs and business 
ventures with Indian national participation.  Indian business 
people, government officials, as well as experts and 
academics from a variety of fields are increasingly reluctant 
to commit to USG programs as a result of these delays.  In 
some extreme cases, Indo-American business partnerships have 
opted to convene in third country locations, rather than risk 
Mantis-induced cancellations.  Some in the Indian community 
feel so aggrieved about the delays of "administrative 
processing," that they have created a Facebook group to 
discuss and protest their treatment.  Mission India 
recognizes the importance to national security protection 
that the Mantis system provides, but strongly recommends that 
immediate and defined measures be taken to streamline and 
expedite the process to avoid unnecessary and costly delays. 
Of the 1100 pending Mantis cases at Embassy New Delhi, 400 
are more than two-months-old.  We support a target for SAO 
processing within a fixed, reasonable amount of time and a 
strategic review of the entire Mantis program. 
 
End Summary 
 
Considerable Costs to American Defense Firms 
 
¶3. (SBU) A major American defense firm operating in India 
relayed its experiences with SAO processing to Post.  Earlier 
this year, the firm needed an electronics expert from the 
Bharat Electronics Company (BEC) to visit its facilities in 
California to help with its Anti-Submarine Warfare program. 
Given the sensitive nature of his work, the BEC employee was 
subject to Matis processing.  By the time processing was 
complete, the team project was over. Our contact at the firm 
explained to us that seventy-five percent of the firm's 
business is done overseas.  India is a particularly promising 
export market because, in spite of the global financial 
crisis, the Indian economy continues to grow and the 
Government has not cut back on defense spending.  Our contact 
estimated that with no-cost, no-commitment demos taking place 
later this year, deals worth over $500 million were at stake. 
 
 
¶4. (SBU)  At the end of 2008, another US defense firm and the 
Indian state-owned company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited 
 
NEW DELHI 00000531  002.2 OF 004 
 
 
(HAL) signed an MOA for the cooperative development of an 
F-16 refueling probe (to meet the offset requirement under a 
more than $10 billion dollar Medium Multi-Role Combat 
Aircraft Request for Proposals (MMRCA RFP) that India has 
tendered internationally.  The project was set to begin in 
July 2008 with an orientation meeting to be held in Texas. 
The US company issued letters of invitation in May 2008 which 
clearly stated the connection between the visit and the 
Foreign Military Sales case. Moreover, the visit was being 
conducted in accordance with a Department of State-approved 
TAA authorization.  Nevertheless, the visas were not approved 
until late August 2008, and as a result, many of the HAL 
personnel who were needed at the orientation were unable to 
attend.  U.S. defense contractors are competing with European 
and Russian firms to win the MMRCA and the inability to plan 
interactions with Indian partners creates serious competitive 
hurdles for US companies bidding on the largest and most 
important defense tender ever by the Indian Government.  It 
also undermines a major US strategic priority to strengthen 
the US-India defense relationship. 
 
USG Programs Affected 
 
¶5. (SBU)  U.S. Department of Agriculture colleagues had to 
cancel an important Borlaug Fellowship Program (academic 
exchanges between US and Indian universities on agricultural 
research) earlier this year because of processing delays. 
The Indian researcher, a specialist in Avian Influenza, was 
set to travel to the U.S. to consult with universities and 
research scientists. The applicant was unable to get his visa 
processed in a timely fashion.  His program had to be 
postponed and  relocated to an alternative venue.  USDA was 
forced to work with the host university to recover its lost 
expenses and laboratory time.  Given that collaborative work 
on pandemic flu prevention is a high USG priority, this visa 
issue was detrimental to our goal of developing cooperative 
working relationships with Indian counterparts. 
 
¶6. (SBU)  USAID had to cancel an entire regulatory training 
program (set to be undertaken with USDA in the U.S.) when a 
number of Indian biotechnology experts did not receive their 
visas at the end of the summer 2008.  As an agricultural 
program, the training was subject to a strict timetable set 
by crop cycles.  The delay caused the stage of crop 
production under study to be missed, rendering the training 
useless and the entire program unworkable. 
 
¶7. (SBU) NIH has collected numerous examples of Indian 
scientists missing critically important international 
meetings and specific project deadlines due to visa 
processing-related delays.  There is research on certain 
diseases done nowhere else in the world, and Indian 
interaction with their U.S. scientist colleagues is critical 
to progress in health protection against these dreaded 
diseases.  Yet, significant personnel time and taxpayer 
dollars are wasted in rescheduling meetings and redoing 
travel arrangements.  In one example, GOI employee Dr. Alka 
Sharma was invited to visit the NIAID Division of 
Microbiology and Infectious Diseases to initiate the 
 
NEW DELHI 00000531  003.2 OF 004 
 
 
development of long-term collaboration in the area of vaccine 
development.  She had meetings planned with more than 15 
different experts at several U.S. sites in September 2008. 
After receiving the visa in November, a reconfigured schedule 
led to a much-reduced opportunity to interact with busy 
colleagues in the United States. 
 
¶8. (SBU) The Department of Commerce, with funding from USTDA, 
invited a number of Indian patent examiners to review patent 
systems for biotechnology.  Delays due to administrative 
processing time prevented their participation in this program 
designed to increase intellectual property protection (IPR) 
for US products in India and strengthen US-India cooperation 
on IPR protection. 
 
¶9. (SBU) The Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum, founded 
in March 2000 with a USD 7 million endowment from the USG, is 
designed to promote collaborative research and activities to 
the benefit of both the United States and India.  Since its 
inception, the Forum has funded 96 events, 92 of which were 
held in India.  The Forum's Executive Director, Dr. Arabinda 
Mitra, informed EmbOffs that the reason for this disparity 
was because it was simply too hard for Indian scientists to 
get U.S. visas and that the Forum had simply given up trying. 
 This has resulted in a serious imbalance in Forum activities 
which are now heavily skewed towards Indian programs - much 
to the detriment of U.S. interests and despite the investment 
of U.S. taxpayer funds. 
 
Other Stories 
 
¶10. (SBU) Dr. Nanjan Sugumaran, Director of Projects at 
Artheon Energy Private Limited, applied for a visa in 
November 2008.  Upon being told that his case had been 
referred for administrative processing, he provided the 
requested additional material to the Consular Section in 
December 2008.  Dr. Sugumaran wanted to travel to the U.S. to 
meet with Northstar Battery, a U.S. firm.  The business deal 
involves Northstar investing several million dollars to 
expand an existing Artheon plant in Nashik, Maharashtra; the 
plant manufactures batteries for use in telecommunications, 
solar lanterns, and electric bicycles.  Once the plant 
expansion is completed, an estimated 75 percent of its sales 
will be in India and 25 percent will be in the U.S. Dr. 
Sugumaran commented that all that is required for the deal to 
conclude is his visit.  Processing has delayed the business 
transaction by an estimated three months. 
 
11, (SBU) A post-doc scholar at Stanford University applied 
for a visa on January 5.  His supervisor, a Professor in the 
Department of Biology at Stanford, stated "This substantial 
delay in processing of his visa has resulted in financial 
loss running in thousands of dollars for my laboratory.  We 
had to cancel or reschedule complex experiments planned well 
in advance of his return on 11 January 2009.  This has 
resulted in wastage of several expensive reagents and animals 
used in research.  This financial loss is paralleled only by 
the loss of precious time, which is so critical to the 
laborious and time consuming neurodevelopment research we 
 
NEW DELHI 00000531  004.2 OF 004 
 
 
conduct in my lab.  Our research requires advanced planning 
and this delay, in effect, has set back research and grant 
applications by about 5 months." 
 
Frustrated Scientists Take Online Action 
 
¶12. (SBU)  In an act of protest, a group of Indian 
scientists, scholars and engineers currently experiencing 
SAO-related visa delays, have formed an online petition 
through the social networking site facebook.com to voice 
their grievances. Organized under the facebook.com "U.S. Visa 
Delays Awareness Group," the assembly of scientists argues 
that the majority of their signatories are U.S. educated, 
U.S. tax-paying scientists, but are unable to return to the 
U.S. to continue their work, and in some cases, reunite with 
their families.  The site can be viewed at 
http://www.facebook.com/board.php?uid=5093333 5266 
 
Many of these stories involve those who have gone to school 
in the U.S. and have already spent 5-10 years there.  They 
and their families are well-established, and find their lives 
disrupted when a short return visit to India turned into a 
three-month stay with work going undone and kids 
out-of-school.  Many of these individuals contribute to the 
United States' competitiveness in high technology and science 
and would prefer to continue their work there - rather than 
Europe or Canada. 
 
¶13. (SBU) Comment and action request:  We second Embassy 
Moscow's well articulated concerns that a drifting wait time 
is a significant issue affecting Mantis cases.  As they note, 
few organizations (including the USG) can plan complete 
travel schedules three-four months out.  For those businesses 
and government agencies that do put together a program, it is 
a terrible blow to find that those who were willing to adjust 
their planning and commit to a two-month wait are now looking 
at three months or more.  While the first and most critical 
step must be to rationalize the Mantis clearance procedure to 
reduce the wait time to a reasonable and predictable level, 
Mission India strongly urges that the entire Mantis program 
be revamped.  Because the underlying value of the program is 
being vastly overshadowed by the damage to U.S. commercial, 
scientific, and other interests, we request that the 
Department encourage an interagency review of the Mantis 
regulations.  This review should look at less disruptive and 
more cost effective ways to achieve the same important goals 
that the Mantis program was designed to achieve.  End Comment. 
 
WHITE