Washington, April 27: America’s political elite is offering the departing Indian ambassador a farewell gift — a gift they hope will lift the veil of distrust that has suddenly descended on Indo-US relations after secretary of state Colin Powell made Pakistan a “major non-Nato ally” of the US.

On Thursday, one day before Lalit Mansingh ends his tenure as ambassador, New York Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John Cornyn, a confidant of President George W. Bush from Texas, will line up a quarter of the Senate’s total membership at a function on Capitol Hill to dedicate the powerful group to the cause of Indo-US relations.

These senators — 12 Republicans and 13 Democrats as of now — will create the Senate Caucus on India, the first such caucus devoted to any foreign country in the 215-year history of the Senate.

In August 2001, two months after presenting his credentials to President Bush, Mansingh had sensitised India’s friends in the Senate to the novel idea of creating such a caucus on the lines of the decade-old Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans in the House of Representatives.

But the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 intervened and Pakistan got wind of the moves. Islamabad marshalled forces inimical to India to sow doubts in the minds of senators about starting something which the Senate had not attempted in two centuries.

With Powell — and President Bush, occasionally — proclaiming Pakistan as an ally in the war against terrorism, some senators had doubts about taking the initiative to create the caucus.

Then, in January this year, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) interested Senator Cornyn, a member of the US president’s export council and of the Congressional Oversight Group on Trade which supervises and consults with the US Trade Representative (USTR), in visiting India for the first time.

The senator, who told Indian correspondents here recently that the visit was an “incredible experience”, began work on creating the caucus shortly after his return. Senator Cornyn will be the Republican co-chair of the caucus.

Among the Democrats, Senator Clinton, who is credited here with having persuaded her husband, Bill Clinton, to take an interest in India during their White House years, eventually changing US policies on South Asia, took the initiative to create the caucus.

Meanwhile, Indian Americans across the US sent a stream of letters urging their respective senators to join the pioneer caucus.

A quarter of the Senate membership has now signed up either with Clinton or with Cornyn. They include floor leaders in the Senate from both parties, Tom Daschle and Bill Frist, Trent Lott, who was Frist’s predecessor as majority leader until December 2002, Kay Bailey Hutchison, the other Republican Senator from Bush’s home state, Joe Lieberman, Al Gore’s Democratic running mate who was almost elected vice-president in 2000 and chairmen or members of several powerful Senate committees.

As a Senate initiative without precedent, it is unlikely that the new caucus will be as bold or outspoken as the Indian Caucus in the House of Representatives, at least initially. But it promises to be a powerful instrument of Indo-US friendship at a time when New Delhi needs more powerful friends in Washington.