India raises a toast to
Iran By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - The one-day visit this week of
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, the first Iranian
head of state to visit India in five years, was
short in time, but it was high in symbolic content
and laid bare some of New Delhi's strategic
thinking.
While energy issues remained the
main focus of the visit, the attention was as much
on perceptions of Washington, which has a major
problem with Iran's independent nuclear program
and has been urging nations, including India, not
to deal with Tehran.
However,
Ahmadinejad's visit is perhaps the first time that
the Congress-party led New Delhi government headed
by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has stood up to
the United States on
Iran,
making an effort to emphasize an independent
foreign policy not influenced by Washington's
ideas.
In the past couple of years, India,
as the new US strategic partner in Asia to dilute
the growing influence of China, has been sensitive
to US urgings, taking a stand against Iran at
international forums.
Awash with its new
stature as "America's friend", New Delhi has also
been accused of deliberately delaying the US$7.6
billion, 2,600-kilometer Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI)
gas pipeline to keep Washington happy.
Coincidentally, India's changed views
emerge even as the India-US civilian nuclear deal
is almost dead due to domestic Indian political
opposition. Washington, instead, has been keen to
push defense purchases from India in the recent
past.
In this period, voices have emerged
from New Delhi indicating a changed thinking about
Iran.
Last week, New Delhi reacted sharply
when US State Department spokesman Tom Casey
called on India to utilize Ahmadinejad's visit to
persuade Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment
activities.
In a terse statement, the
Foreign Ministry said, "India and Iran are ancient
civilizations whose relations span centuries. Both
nations are perfectly capable of managing all
aspects of their relationship with the appropriate
degree of care and attention."
Iran
recently declared it has considerably widened its
plans to enrich uranium, a program that has earned
it three rounds of United Nations sanctions and
independent ones from the United States, which
fears Tehran has a nuclear weapons program.
This week, Indian Foreign Secretary
Shivshankar Menon said isolating Iran is not the
right approach. "From our point of view, the more
engagement there is, the more Iran becomes a
factor of stability in the region." He said the
IPI pipeline was "doable".
Indian National
Security Adviser M K Narayanan recently said that
India-Iran relations need to be handled in a
subtle way. "It [Iran] is a big country, it is a
major country, with tremendous influence, and you
need to deal with it diplomatically. Otherwise,
the world will have to pay a heavy price," he told
a conference.
Indeed, the reasons for
India's new approach are many and the stakes are
quite high.
Firstly, India desperately
needs energy sources, with competitor China
equally keen to tap Iran's rich hydrocarbon
fields. China has expressed willingness to join a
truncated IPI should India keep away from it.
Pakistan has been smarting under
Washington's pro-India tilt and will be happy to
accommodate China. This year, a Pakistan Foreign
Office spokesman said, "If there are prospects of
China joining the IPI project with or without
India, we will welcome it. Pakistan is committed
to the pipeline because of its desire to achieve
energy security."
Secondly, domestic
Indian politics is a big determining factor now.
Political parties will look to exploit New Delhi
as a "US stooge" in general elections due in a
year.
There is the fear of a backlash from
Indian Muslim voters, who constitute a sizable
constituency, and despise America due to its
attack on Iraq and now problems with Iran.
New Delhi's latest move can also be seen
as an attempt to keep the anti-US coalition
partners, the left parties, happy. Indications are
that any new government next year, whether headed
by the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party or a
Third Front formation, will have to seek outside
support.
It is important for the Congress
to keep the left parties happy as it is quite
possible that they will be needed again for the
next round of government formation.
Thirdly, there is a growing view that New
Delhi has to learn how to deal and balance various
nations' interests to sustain a high-growing
Indian economy, in need for new markets for both
export and import. India's gross domestic product
is growing at 8-9% per annum.
Such an
approach could have its dividends and result in
win-win situations.
Keen to obtain new
gas, India last week formally joined the Asian
Development Bank-sponsored and US-backed
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) pipeline
project that has now been officially renamed as
the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI)
gas pipeline.
Indicating forward movements
on IPI, Ahmadinejad told a news conference after
talks for over three-hours with Manmohan and
senior officials in New Delhi, "All pending issues
and agreements will be finalized within 45 days
and given to the leadership of the three
countries. Afterwards we will decide."
An
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said that
"reaching an agreement on the [IPI] project will
be possible" in the light of recent ministerial
level India-Pakistan talks on transit issues.
The Ahmadinejad visit will boost
state-owned explorer Oil and Natural Gas
Corporation's (ONGC's) chances of winning an
equity stake in the gas-rich South Pars block in
Iran, along with private player Hindujas.
According to the latest reports, the
Hindujas Group-ONGC combine has secured Iran's
approval to conduct due diligence for taking
stakes in one of the largest oil and gas fields.
The deal for the projects, signed by
Hindujas with NICO, a wholly-owned subsidiary of
the National Iranian Oil Co, in August 2007, had
not taken off, reportedly due to Chinese attempts
to win the project. Under the deal, Hindujas will
take a 45% stake in the Azadegan oilfield and a
60% stake in Phase 12 of the giant South Pars gas
field.
Indian officials say a breakthrough
could also be achieved soon in the $22 billion
liquefied natural gas deal with Tehran, signed in
2005, for the supply of 5 million tonnes of gas
per year for 25 years that is stalled due to price
disputes.
However, some analysts still say
Iran is unlikely to become a major exporter for
more than a decade, given the tough attitude of
Western countries, especially the US, which has
threatened sanctions against any nation dealing
with Tehran.
Ahmadinejad believes
otherwise, "The ruling powers are collapsing and
falling down. We just prepare ourselves for the
collapse. America is not the previous America. It
is the falling power," he said in New Delhi. The
Iranian president criticized "bullying powers" for
trying to rein "Iran's right to develop nuclear
energy".
Clearly, dealing with both Iran
and the US will be one of the big foreign-policy
challenges India will face in the near future.
Siddharth
Srivastava is a New Delhi-based
journalist.
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