A friendly reassurance

A STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP is being fashioned as the defining spirit of an evolving new relationship between India and Russia. A document embodying the bilateral aspirations suited to this emerging outlook is proposed to be signed during the visit to India by the Russian President, Mr. Vladimir Putin. The simple but profound objective is a qualitative leap to capture the dynamic mood of the present post-Cold War era in global politics. Now, a comparison between the prospective new charter of India- Russia relations and the Indo-Soviet treaty of a bygone age will obviously be inappropriate, given the present strategic flux across the world including South Asia in particular. However, Moscow's latest reassurances of direct interest to New Delhi signify a transparent attempt by the Putin administration to regain some of the mystique of the old bonhomie. The reason is not far to seek. The ongoing strategic interplay of forces, besides Russia's dramatic diplomacy of having engaged Pakistan in some critical parleys prior to Mr. Putin's arrival in India, appeared to have cast an avoidable shadow over his planned agenda for a fresh equation with New Delhi. In one sense, the controversial visit to Pakistan last week by the Kremlin's special envoy, Mr. Sergei Yastrzhembsky, was almost entirely traceable to Moscow's updated sense of urgency to try and persuade Islamabad to rein in its perceived protege, the Taliban, in its militant adventurism in areas bordering Russia's traditional sphere of influence. It is also plausible that a future dialogue between Moscow and Islamabad as a sequel to Mr. Putin's current India-agenda can stir speculation about Moscow's real motives. In the event, the reported style and substance of the Russian emissary's diplomatic foray in Islamabad sent a wrong signal, compelling the officials in New Delhi and Moscow to assert that no damage was either intended or inflicted on the expanding India-Russia equation.

Three aspects of the clarifications by some Russian officials merit attention. First, the affirmation about the centrality of the proposed strategic partnership to Russia's post-Soviet ties with India is good news. But the Vajpayee administration must guard against any triumphalism at having perceivably convinced Washington as also Moscow, in recent months, about India's strategic value to both these powers. It is premature to draw any definitive conclusion of this magnitude at this stage, on account of the imminence of the U.S. presidential poll and Moscow's transparent effort to enlarge its strategic outreach in South Asia and its environs. It is no innovative variant of non- alignment to inch strategically close to both Washington and Moscow. Second, the reported Russian disclaimer about the possibility of any defence cooperation with Pakistan is certainly logical in the present circumstances. The third but not the least relevant reality is that Russia is not inclined to mediate on Kashmir now, despite Pakistan's reported suggestion in that regard.

The Soviet Union's role in bringing India and Pakistan to the table for talks in Tashkent in January 1966, in the specific context of the lingering impact of their 1965 war, is no precedent of any real consequence to Islamabad's calculus. The Shastri-Ayub Khan parleys took place at the ``invitation'' of the then Soviet Prime Minister, Alexei Kosygin, and India saw Moscow's role at the time as a positive factor that influenced Pakistan, a U.S. ally, to pledge an avoidance of force to settle its disputes with New Delhi. With differing political compulsions influencing the interlocutors at Tashkent, subsequent events in South Asia, some of them cataclysmic in scope, swept that historic event itself to virtual obscurity. But the continuing relevance of dialogue and engagement to the tangled India- Pakistan ties cannot be exaggerated, the idea of external facilitation being a matter for separate debate.

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Section  : Opinion
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