The US officials have warned India against buying the Russian S-400 missile systems a week after India accepted an offer from the United States to buy the National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System-II (NASAMS-II).
Days before the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's visit to India, a senior official from the US Department of State on Friday said, "With respect to the S-400, we're urging all of our allies and partners, India included, to forgo transactions with Russia that risk triggering the CAATSA [Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act] sanctions... This is a time we will be encouraging India to look at alternatives."
The upcoming Pompeo's visit to India is said to strengthen strategic bilateral cooperations between both the countries.
Earlier, this month US had pushed India to consider buying its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) and Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) defence missile system in a bid to break the defence deal between India with Russia.
While India confirmed that it will be buying the US NASAMS-II systems earlier this month, the Indian Foreign Ministry has expressed that it had no plans of scrapping the $5.43 billion deal inked with Russia in 2018 for five squadrons of the advanced S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile systems, despite the threat of US imposing sanctions.
Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA)
US President Donald Trump signed into a United States federal law that imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia on August 2, 2017. According to the law, the US has the power to impose sanctions on any country that participates in trade or defence deal with any of the three countries.
Apart from the Russian arms deal, two Indian oil companies ordered crude oil from Iran in 2018, ignoring the CAATSA sanctions.
