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Towards restoring warm ties with Russia

During his visit to Moscow on November 11 and 12, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh faces an uphill task of staying the course of strategic relationship with Russia as signs of a cooling off have shown up between India and Russia for the first time in a decade.

It will be the last Indo-Russian summit with President Vladimir Putin and it may well set the tone for bilateral ties after he steps down next May. Mr. Putin takes the credit for putting India back on the Russian radar screen from which it all but disappeared under his West-looking predecessor Boris Yeltsin. Under Mr. Putin, the two countries have resumed annual bilateral summits, upgraded their relations to a strategic level, stepped up defence cooperation and enhanced interaction on pressing global and regional issues.

However, the atmosphere in bilateral ties began to change almost imperceptibly after India struck the nuclear deal with the United States. Moscow had no problem with the deal as such. In fact, Russia had been urging India to press more energetically its case with the U.S. for lifting Nuclear Suppliers Group restrictions. What put Moscow on guard was the fear that New Delhi was cosying up to Washington on strategic issues.

Quadripartite consultations earlier this year by Japan, the U.S., India and Australia, followed by joint naval war games held by the four nations plus Singapore in the Bay of Bengal in September, triggered Russian concerns that India may be strapped to what Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described as the “formation of a military-political ‘triangle’ in the Asia-Pacific region involving the U.S., Japan and Australia.” Without mentioning India, he denounced as “counter-productive” attempts to achieve security by setting up closed defence alliances.

“The format of closed military-political blocs raises questions in neighbouring countries not party to them what these alliances are actually being created for and against whom,” the Minister said in an obvious reference to the U.S. attempts to put together new security arrangements in Asia to contain China. He made the comments in an interview ahead of his trip to Tokyo, from where he was headed for Harbin, China, to attend a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of India, Russia and China.

The Harbin meeting strengthened the impression in Moscow that New Delhi was shifting foreign policy goalposts. The joint communiqué adopted made no mention of India, Russia and China sharing “a common approach to key global developments in the 21st century,” which the three countries put on paper at their first stand-alone meeting in Vladivostok in 2005.

An intriguing linguistic discrepancy in the English and Russian texts of the Harbin communiqué appeared also to indicate different perceptions of the triangle in Delhi and Moscow. While the English text said trilateral cooperation sought to broaden common ground amidst “divergent interests,” the Russian equivalent can be translated as “diversity of interests.”

“Divergence” of interests has been evident on Iran. While Russia strongly denounced unilateral U.S. sanctions imposed on Tehran last month, India remained silent on the issue. Delhi also appeared to have recently developed cold feet on its membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which it joined two years ago as observer. In the run-up to a SCO summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in August this year, official sources in Delhi said India was reluctant to embrace the military, strategic and political agenda of the SCO but was eager to be a “hands-on participant” in the grouping’s trade and economic projects. It pressed its point, dispatching the Petroleum Minister rather than the External Affairs Minister to the summit.

Moscow views with suspicion India’s plan to join the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) gas pipeline project later this month even as talks on the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline got bogged down over price issues. Washington has all along opposed the IPI pipeline and promoted the TAP project as part of its “Greater Central Asia” plan hatched to sideline the SCO and reduce the influence of Russia and China in the region. For its part, Russia has been supportive of the IPI pipeline and offered to help build it.

Till now, Moscow has accepted New Delhi’s assurances that its closer relationship with Washington is little more than a result of India’s rise as a global economic and political power, and in any case it would not be at the expense of ties with Russia. However, Russia is concerned that India’s growing ties with the U.S. should not put Delhi in Washington’s strategic orbit.

It signalled its concerns when neither External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee nor Defence Minister A.K. Antony, who visited Moscow last month, could meet Mr. Putin though he was in town. In the past, such meetings were a sign of the special warmth and trust between the two countries.

In a further setback to India, Petroleum Minister Murli Deora had to cancel his trip to Moscow last month to attend an annual energy forum after diplomats failed to fix a meeting with his Russian counterpart. This flop underscored India’s frustration at failing to extend its foothold in the Russian energy market beyond the Sakhalin-1 project.

Ahead of the November 12 summit, a top Russian diplomat discreetly registered Moscow’s displeasure, refusing to give a traditional upbeat view on bilateral ties. Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov described the relations merely as “normal” and mentioned “certain wrinkles in the moods” between Moscow and Delhi even as he cautioned against giving them “any serious importance.”

These whiffs of chill from Russia do not mean the Indian Prime Minister will be stonewalled in Moscow or that his meeting with Mr. Putin will be a failure. The Kremlin has notified India of its worries but will not want to put it off. In fact, the Indian media have overplayed the jarring notes from Moscow. The alleged “snub” to Mr. Mukherjee when he was “frisked” at the Moscow airport appeared nothing more than a protocol lapse blamed on Indian diplomats. Similarly, the Indian media jumped the gun when they suggested that Moscow tried to lower the protocol status of the Prime Minister’s visit by insisting on his having a separate meeting with his Russian counterpart. This demand had more to do with the Kremlin’s efforts at promoting Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov as a possible successor to Mr. Putin in next year’s presidential elections.

Russia sets great store by its close relations with a non-aligned and independent India. Meeting with foreign academics last month, Mr. Putin said India, along with Russia and China, belonged to an exclusive group of preciously few countries that can afford the luxury of genuine sovereignty. And Russia wants India to stay in that group.

When he meets Dr. Singh in the Kremlin on Monday, Mr. Putin is likely to go out of his way to revive the warmth of the previous summits and reaffirm the strategic partnership of the two countries. The two sides will sign a host of accords, notably for construction of four more Russian nuclear reactors at the Koodankulam power project, which Moscow suggested would be independent of the fate of the India-U.S. nuclear deal. Defence cooperation will also get a major boost with the expected signing of an agreement to jointly develop and build a medium-range transport aircraft for the armed forces of the two countries. This project, together with last month’s agreement on joint development of a fifth generation fighter aircraft, lays the groundwork for Indo-Russian strategic alliance in aircraft building that may eventually challenge the dominance of U.S. and European plane makers.

These accords will lend new dynamism to Indo-Russian relations. But to guarantee their long-term stability and immunity from foreign policy chasms, New Delhi and Moscow urgently need to address one dangerous weakness in their relations — the abysmally low level of trade and economic ties. Bilateral trade today stands at $4 billion, and the target for 2010 is $10 billion. But these are not the kinds of commercial ties that can bond two large and growing economies. Big Indian corporations are conspicuously absent from the Russian market. Bilateral trade remains dominated by primary commodities and traditional exports.

Government-to-government mechanisms of promoting two-way business ties need to be revamped. The Intergovernmental Commission for promoting trade, economic and technological cooperation has miserably failed in its task. Delhi and Moscow now pin their hopes on a Joint Task Force (JTF) expected to be set up during Dr. Singh’s visit. It should monitor implementation of the recommendations drawn up by a Joint Study Group set up last year to identify hurdles to bilateral trade and provide solutions. But the group is still to release its report prepared five months ago. This useless bureaucratic paper mill must finally be stopped.

Diplomats concede that unless urgent measures are taken in the next three-four years to rectify the situation, India will be shut out of the Russian market for many years to come. Weak economic ties are a time bomb placed under the edifice of Indo-Russian strategic partnership.

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