Boost for India ties under Putin

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JULY 10. Relations between India and Russia are set to acquire a new strategic dimension in the post-Yeltsin era, Russian official sources said commenting on a series of high- level interactions this year.

Never before in the past 10 years had the Russian leadership been so determined to prioritise relations with India as it was today, the sources said. It was during the second half of Mr. Boris Yeltsin's nine-year rule that Moscow declared a course towards building strategic partnership, but it was only today that this policy was given a real drive and coherence.

The President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, set the stage for a new warmth in bilateral ties, telling the visiting Defence Minister, Mr. George Fernandes, two weeks ago: ``I'm the closest, dearest and greatest friend of India in Russia.''

Mr. Fernandes was the second senior Cabinet member after the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, to have been received by the Russian President in less than a week last month - something that never happened in Russian modern history, not only in the case of visitors from India but also from any other country.

The initial push to a new upward spiral in the relations was given when Mr. Putin's chief security adviser, Mr. Sergei Ivanov, and the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the defence industry and arms trade, Mr. Ilya Klebanov, went to India in April ``to further intensify close interaction and impart more dymanism to our political dialogue,'' as Mr. Ivanov explained. India was the first country such a high-power Russian delegation visited barely a month after Mr. Putin had been elected President.

The two sides pushed ahead with talks on new major defence deals and signed a protocol between the security councils of the two countries to set up coordination groups for combating terrorism, separatism as well as arms and drugs trafficking.

Subsequent top-level talks in Moscow identified thrust areas in the emerging strategic partnership: foreign policy, defence, science and technology. The three Union Ministers responsible for these sectors visited Moscow one after another in the past two weeks - another unprecedented development in Russia's relations with any country.

The only nagging problem in bilateral relations - the fate of five Russian pilots convicted in the Purulia armsdrop case - has been pushed to the sidelines, with Mr. Jaswant Singh assuring the Russian leadership that the issue will be resolved before Mr. Putin visits India. ``The talks with the three ministers in Moscow showed that strategic partnership between India and Russia already exists and Putin is anxious to cement it further,'' a senior Russian diplomat told The Hindu.

In foreign policy, this partnership is based on the identity of long-term national and geopolitical interest of the two countries and shared views on all major international issues.

In the defence sphere, the President told Mr. Fernandes that a strong India was in Russia's national interests and it would do everything to make India ``invulnerable to external threats.'' The emphasis in defence cooperation will shift from arms deals to transfer of technology for helping India achieve self-sufficiency in defence production. Mr. Fernandes described his talks in Moscow as ``path-breaking.''

In science and technology, already one of the most successful areas of bilateral cooperation, Moscow has reaffirmed its readiness to share with New Delhi its knowhow in areas where Russian scientists have a lead - nuclear energy, computer-aided design, biotechnology and many more. The Union Minister of Human Resource Development, Science and Technology and Ocean Development, Dr. M.M. Joshi, who wound up his week-long visit on Saturday, hailed the reception accorded to Indian scientists, to whom the doors of Russian laboratories and research centres were thrown open. The 13-year-old Integrated Long-Term Programme (ILTP) of Indo-Russian cooperation in science and technology, due to be renewed during Mr. Putin's visit, has resulted in close to 300 research projects materialising in 16 thrust areas.

There is also the hope that trade and economic cooperation will finally take off, with the expected $1 billion- odd investment by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in Sakhalin projects and the setting in motion of a 90-day economic action plan proposed by Mr. Singh to identify joint projects in oil, energy, diamonds, transportation and some other promising areas of cooperation.

``With no country in Asia, Russia has such a high level of trust that we have achieved with India,'' the Russian diplomat said. ``And it is set to rise higher under Putin.''

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