Delhi refuses to toe US line on Iran standoff
Washington, Feb. 9:
A decade after Washington falsely believed that Pakistan was “with us” following Pervez Musharraf’s somersault against the Taliban, the US government is being called to account little by little and New Delhi is having its last laugh.
During three days of packed discussions that foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai had in Washington this week with US administration officials, American lawmakers and members of the strategic community,
he made it clear that punishing Iran for the present nuclear stand-off was tantamount to treating the symptom and not the disease.
Mathai faced a barrage of demands — the most strident ones on Capitol Hill — that India should downgrade ties with Iran and cut imports of Iranian crude.
The foreign secretary reeled off figures to show that New Delhi’s oil imports had already fallen and will continue to fall because market conditions were simply making it hard on Indian companies to import from Iran on account of Western sanctions.
But the broader criticism of New Delhi’s ties with Tehran was like water off the duck’s back for the Indian delegation, according to accounts pieced together by this reporter in conversations with Congressional aides, administration officials and the Indian side.
The Indian team for the “foreign office consultations” from Monday, which included Mathai, ambassador Nirupama Rao and a phalanx of officials at varying stages
during the last three days had an argument on Iran which the Americans could not ignore.
Iran was the only access point to Afghanistan for India which is the fifth largest donor of aid to Kabul after the US, UK, Japan and Germany. Afghanistan would suffer from any bad relations between New Delhi and Tehran.
That rationale has many takers in Washington which is already jittery over a spate of official conclusions that border on doomsday scenarios of a Taliban return once the Americans withdraw after what is increasingly seen as a failed decade-long war in Afghanistan, supported by Nato.
But here too, the root of the problem, the Indian delegation told the Americans, is Pakistan, which has dragged its feet even on the implementation of a trade and transit treaty which benefits Afghan farmers and businessmen who want to trade with India.
Islamabad stubbornly prevents any Indian access to Afghanistan, which makes Iran the only route for New Delhi’s development assistance or anything else to reach Kabul.
On the nuclear stand-off with Iran,
the Indian view has ingredients which squarely blame Washington for the present situation: for at least 20 years the US targeted buyers of clandestine nuclear materials and technology, such as Iran, even as they totally allowed black market sellers of such technology to not only go scot-free, but thrive.
The Americans did not do anything against the A.Q. Khan network during the long years when they enabled Iran to travel on the long road towards nuclearisation. Even when Washington could no longer ignore the Khan network, it accepted hook, line and sinker Musharraf’s argument that the father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme was acting on his own instead of having him shipped into detention, maybe in Guantanamo.
India’s unwillingness to be America’s cat’s paw on Iran and its determination, instead, to follow international law and treaties in such matters is not new.
Rao, during her visits here as Mathai’s predecessor and now as ambassador has forcefully put across New Delhi’s stand not only at closed door meetings, but also at her public engagements.
Many years ago, when Nicholas Burns, who was under-secretary of state for political affairs invited Shivshankar Menon, who was visiting Washington as foreign secretary to a high-end Italian restaurant for a private dinner and tried to twist his arm on Iran over Indian companies accused of violating sanctions, Menon called a spade a spade in an encounter that has become a not-so-secret stuff of diplomatic folklore here.
But the main objective of this week’s foreign office consultations was to face upfront divisive issues between India and the US.
External affairs minister S.M. Krishna will travel to Washington for the next round of the Indo-US strategic dialogue. Both sides are now looking at June as a possible date before American politicians plunge headlong into the presidential election campaign to the exclusion of most other things.
India was determined that the undercurrent of gripes here on a range of issues from India’s choice of French fighter aircraft to the nuclear liability bill must be arrested so that Krishna’s visit is triumphal and productive instead of a fence-mending effort.
This week’s exercise would appear to have gone forward considerably towards achieving that objective.
Sources on both sides said on background that neither side brought up India’s decision to buy 126 Rafale multi-role combat aircraft, except for a comment by one US official in half-jest on a social occasion that India opted for poor quality planes. Grapes continue to be sour even in the 21 st century in the proverbial sense.
Rao met US secretary of state Hillary Clinton two weeks before Mathai arrived here to prepare the ground for such an approach. State department sources said Rao briefed Clinton on a recent meeting in New Delhi at which Indian buyers and American sellers of nuclear equipment, assisted by lawyers on both sides, worked towards greater clarity on the liability law which has upset Washington.
An Indian embassy press release on the meeting was pregnant with implications of the New Delhi meeting. It said Rao and Clinton “agreed to continue their efforts to further consolidate upon the progress made and work towards implementing the initiatives that had been taken in the last few years, including in the area of civil nuclear co-operation.”
Mathai assured the Americans that the Delhi meeting was a “first round” and the Americans responded that their companies were quantifying financial commitments in the light of clarifications at that session, sources said.
Surprisingly, Maldives was not on the agenda of the foreign office consultations suggesting that Washington had left the crisis to New Delhi just as it did when Rajiv Gandhi intervened against a coup on the island 23 years ago.
I think our Diplomats are playing the cards pretty well for now..The arguments seem reasonable enough and India is trying to shift focus elsewhere by bringing in the Afghanistan issue!
