Foremost among the reasons is economic. There is no gainsaying that the Indian economy, to say nothing of Pakistan's, has taken a beating from the sanctions and that this has compounded general domestic and external economic gloom to create a cloud in India and outright crisis in Pakistan.

It is not perhaps too much to expect that the psychological impact itself of the move will be tremendous, and a joyous stock market response could be an added bonus. Those in fact would be incidental benefits.

The direct impact is even more promising. It should be to free up and boost the much-needed US investments and the general economic relationship with the world's most powerful economy. In Pakistan's case, most crucially, a $5 billion IMF bail-out is now assured.

No less important is the principle of the thing. Washington may stress, and perhapsrightly so, that it was guided by both India and Pakistan making satisfactory progress in complying with its various concerns post-Pokharan II. But the gesture is also an acknowledgement that sanctions are a suspect tool for achieving political ends.

True, both India and Pakistan have been hurt, but so have US corporations. The lifting of the sanctions relating to US Exim Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corporation programmes is a wise move which will benefit everyone.

For a country which lectures the world not to mix economics with politics in trade and investment, America continues to display surprising enthusiasm for imposing unilateral sanctions. Hopefully, as well as a conviction that its objectives vis-a-vis India and Pakistan's nuclear conduct are being achieved, the lifting is also a sign that this enthusiasm is waning.

Above all, the removal of the bulk of economic sanctions is confirmation of progress on the various concerns following from the subcontinental nuclear tests: missile andwarhead deployment and nuclear safety, an assurance that India and Pakistan are going to keep talking to improve relations and contain nuclear risk, and the terms of their formal adherence to the nuclear non-proliferation agenda.

Last but hardly least is an indication that the ground is being laid for resuming a normal relationship with Washington which was so rudely disrupted in May. Whether or not the Indian government views the step as a sufficient incentive to make an unequivocal commitment on the CTBT, a major hurdle to such a commitment has been removed and the ball placed back in India's court.

A necessary though perhaps not sufficient condition has been met by the US in relation to Indian concerns. It is now up to India to structure its response.

True, India's wish for a removal of the ban on the transfer of technologies has not been granted. But this is an issue which pre-dates by more than two decades the economic sanctions that were imposed in the wake of Pokharan-II. What Saturday's move byWashington does is get out of the way something that would have held up constructive engagement on the range of issues involved and give momentum to this engagement.