Indian views on Pakistan's likely MNNA status

While the Foreign Office here awaits official intimation of Washington's decision to upgrade relations with Islamabad to the level of a 'Major Non-Nato Ally' (MNNA), New Delhi continues to be uneasy over the reports.
News surveys and reports based on private conversations with external affairs experts in India say that the India is perturbed since US Secretary of State Colin Powell made the announcement here last month.
New Delhi feels more sore over the fact that barely 48 hours earlier the Americans were amidst their leaders calling them "strategic partners". He was reported to have described the relations between Washington and New Delhi as the "best that existed between two great democracies in many, many years, if not in history".
But they had not found it worthwhile to brief the Vajpayee administration about what they had in store for Islamabad.
In international press reports afloat on the world-wide web, the Indian officials have been quoted to believe that the MNNA status would "tilt the balance of power in favour of Pakistan" as if it was alright and in the interest of peace to have the tilt in their favour.
While Islamabad insists that it will only explain the benefits, the scope and the "responsibilities" the status might bring with it when it is officially relayed to it and also notified to the US Congress, the Indians believe it would put Pakistan on par with longstanding US allies, like Japan and Israel. It will, according to the South Bloc experts, make Pakistan eligible for "certain military equipment and supplies".
Despite some caustic comments, thrown here and there by officials as well as non-officials, the overwhelming view is that in the long India-US relations would not suffer. "No mater how slighted India feels, it still needs the promise of economic and technological co-operation held out by the strategic partnership the US is offering", an American analyst of US-India relationship had been reported to view in recent comments.
Similarly, they think that the initial Indian reaction to the MNNA declaration might also not dampen New Delhi's march onto the "peace process" to which it seems to have been put to tread, by the Americans.