Two top US Senators on Tuesday appealed to President Joe Biden not to impose provisions of the punitive Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) against India for purchasing S-400 surface-to-air missile system from Russia.
Senators Mark Warner of the Democratic Party and John Cornyn of the Republican Party urged President Biden to grant a national interest waiver to India as mentioned under CAATSA, in a letter.
“We strongly encourage to grant a CAATSA waiver to India for its planned purchase of the S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile system. In cases where granting a waiver would advance the national security interests of the US, this waiver authority, as written into the law by Congress, allows the President additional discretion in applying sanctions,” the two Senators wrote in their letter to the President.
CAATSA is a stringent US law that authorises the administration to impose sanctions on countries that buy major defense hardware from Russia in response to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its alleged meddling in the 2016 US Presidential elections.
