WASHINGTON — This has not been a very good year for those in Washington who want to focus on foreign policy issues. Congress, the White House and the media have been preoccupied with Monica Lewinsky and talk of impeachment. Now official attention has turned to the Republican leadership struggle. There seem to be only two ways in which foreign affairs get attention these days. First, if there is an explosion — the nuclear variety in South Asia, terrorist attacks and U.S. retaliation in Central Asia and Africa, suicide bombings amid hopes for peace in the Middle East, or the on-again-off-again threats of military force against Saddam Hussein for flagrant violations of agreements.

The second way is if the subject is China, a country whose economic potential holds out the promise of enormous trade ties. Relations with China have become the sine qua non for an American president seeking to show that he is "presidential."

But if explosions and economic opportunities are what it takes to get American attention, India should be at the top of the list. This new member of the nuclear club is also a potentially huge market for American goods and investments. Already the United States is India's largest trading partner, with about $11 billion in two-way trade and, most importantly, investment. Both partners benefit.

America accounts for roughly 30 percent of all the foreign investment in India. Meanwhile, India, which has educated the world's second largest pool of scientists and engineers (after America's), invents more sophisticated software for American computer makers than any other country.

Yet when Madeleine Albright went to India last November, she was the first U.S. secretary of state to visit in 14 years. For one long period, the United States was not even represented by an ambassador. And the envoys it did name came and went quickly. Thomas Pickering, a popular ambassador in New Delhi, was pulled out in 1993 after less than a year. No American president has been to India since Jimmy Carter in 1978. President Bill Clinton flew over India last June to make his unprecedented nine-day tour of China.

Now he has scrubbed a long-planned, long-overdue trip to the subcontinent. One U.S. official, trying to explain this decision, said it was not cancellation as punishment for India's nuclear detonation but "postponement because of progress."

The comparison with China, a popular travel destination for U.S. presidents since Richard Nixon in 1972, is striking.

India was the first country to call for global nuclear disarmament. And the Indian government has never sold missile or nuclear technology to anyone. From1974, when it first exploded an atomic device, to last May, when it came out of the closet with five underground explosions, it watched China conduct more than 40 nuclear tests.

India has not broken any international treaties, because it never signed either the 1970 nonproliferation treaty or the 1996 test ban treaty.

China, however, has been the world's biggest proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. From 1987 until Mr. Clinton's recent summit meeting in Beijing, China repeatedly pledged not to sell nuclear and missile technology and equipment, went back on its word, and then agreed never again to do what it had already agreed never again to do.

Despite this record of repeatedly violating its international commitment under the nonproliferation treaty, China receives virtually unrestricted American high-technology exports and equipment that can be used for military purposes. So why not India?

India makes up almost a quarter of the world's population. What national security adviser Samuel Berger stated about China is also true about India: "You can't turn your back on a quarter of the world's population."

After testifying about proliferation, Karl Inderfurth, U.S. assistant secretary of state for South Asia, recently told Congress: "The economic and commercial investment part of our relationship should be the centerpiece of our relationship with India." The administration should follow up on those words by starting to treat India as one of the great powers that it is. President Clinton should visit, the sooner the better.

Meanwhile, Congress should remove the sanctions that prevent U.S. firms from providing India with much-needed help in replacing, or even managing, its aging, potentially dangerous nuclear power plants. The new Congress must then put aside some of its squabbles and develop a policy toward India commensurate with the country's growing importance. Should it really take explosions to get noticed?

Stanley A. Weiss is founder and chairman of Business Executives for National Security. The views he expresses are his own.