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India and Russia united in
space
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW
- India and Russia on Wednesday decided to jointly
develop a major space program, signaling new horizons in
cooperation between the two countries. During Indian
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's three-day visit,
the Russian and Indian space agencies signed a deal
pledging to cooperate in space research, including
exploration of the moon.
Yuri Koptev, the head
of the Russian Aerospace Agency, Rosaviakosmos,
confirmed the news in televised remarks, but declined to
reveal financial and other details. Russian media
speculated that a joint spacecraft could be sent to the
moon.
India's Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal
said that Russia's plans to create a space-based
navigation system comparable to America's Global
Positioning System and Delhi's unmanned moon mission had
emerged as areas for potential cooperation. "Space
cooperation is a very important area of bilateral
cooperation," Sibal said.
Russia, he said, had
expressed an interest in assisting in Chandrayaan-I,
India's mission to send a spacecraft to the moon in
2008. Referring to Russia's proposed Global Orbiting
Navigation Satellite System (Glonass), he said that
there was "major potential" for cooperation in the
fabrication and launch of satellites.
On the
political front, the subject of a "multipolar world
order" was a major theme during talks between Russian
President Vladimir Putin and Vajpayee, and the leaders
signed a joint statement as well as a declaration on
global challenges and threats to international security,
which among other things stated that no country or group
of countries could or should monopolize the right to
rule the world by "humanitarian or other interventions".
Putin and Vajpayee also discussed military ties,
trade and international issues, and Putin hailed
bilateral military cooperation between the countries as
"promising".
During the Cold War, the former
Soviet Union and India maintained close ties, and Moscow
was India's biggest arms supplier and an important trade
partner. New Delhi has bought some US$30 billion worth
of weapons from Moscow since the 1960s, and Russian
weapons account for nearly three quarters of India's
arsenal.
India and Russia have agreed to extend
to 2010 a long-term program of military-technical
cooperation signed in 1994 and initially limited to the
year 2000. India imported Russian arms worth $3.5
billion between 1990 and 1996.
Russia and India
have agreed on cooperation in building a new fighter
aircraft and joint production of the Brahmos cruise
missile. The Brahmos, expected to be deployed in 2004,
based on the Russian Yakhont anti-ship missile, has a
range of 300 kilometers and flies at twice the speed of
sound. India is due to start manufacturing Su-30MKIs
under license at plants in India by as soon as 2004. A
long-awaited $1.5 billion deal on the purchase of the
Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, initially due
to be clinched by the end of 2001, is now expected by
the end of this month.
Moscow and Delhi believe
that the current level of bilateral commercial trade is
not enough. India expects that trade with Russia could
reach $5 billion a year by 2005, the RIA news agency
quoted the head of the Indian Federation of Chambers of
Commerce, A K Mutya, as saying.
Bilateral trade
turnover between Russia and India slipped to some $1.5
billion last year from around $4 billion a year in the
early 1990s. Indo-Russian trade includes tea, tobacco
and pharmaceuticals from India and metal products and
fertilizers from Russia. Moscow had hoped to increase
bilateral trade to $5 billion annually by 2000.
During Vajpayee's visit to Moscow, Russian and
Indian officials reportedly discussed India's Oil and
Natural Gas Corp's (ONGC) investment in Russia, as well
as cooperation on the Kudamkulan nuclear power project
at an estimated cost of $2.6 billion. The project
involves Russia building the plant in India's southern
Tamil Nadu state, with two 1,000 megawatt reactors.
Three years ago, India's ONGC acquired a 20
percent stake in an offshore oil and natural gas project
in Russia. ONGC insisted on a deferred payment method to
reduce its immediate risk. ONGC paid Russian state-owned
Rosneft about $315 million for the 20 percent stake -
$90 million to compensate for Rosneft's expenditures in
Sakhalin 1 and $225 million as a premium for ONGC's
future participation in the project.
ONGC's
total spending on the Sakhalin project is expected to
reach $2 billion over a 10 to 15-year period. This
includes financing Rosneft's share of future investment
in the form of a loan. Rosneft would repay the loan out
of its profits made from Sakhalin 1 at LIBOR plus 3
percent in a scheme designed to protect ONGC in the
event that oil prices fall sharply. Sakhalin 1 has been
predicted to begin production in 2005, generating 8
million tons of oil and 9.5 billion cubic meters of
natural gas a year.
India is also one of
Russia's biggest debtors, owing some $10 billion, mostly
for earlier warplanes and other arms supplies. In 1992,
an agreement was signed requiring India to repay the
loans in rupees over 12 years, $1 billion of which would
be used each year to buy Indian goods. But Russia has
never managed to purchase $1 billion worth of goods each
year. Now moves toward switching from rupees to hard
currency are seen as instrumental in encouraging trade
between the two nations.
Adding to official
pronouncements of bilateral harmony, on Wednesday,
Vajpayee told the Russian Academy of Science "there are
no contradictions between New Delhi and Moscow".
Incidentally, Vajpayee's trip to Moscow
coincided with controversy over Moscow's only Hare
Krishna temple, which is now set to be demolished. The
old building, which served as a temple for some 30,000
Hindus and Hare Krishna devotees in Moscow, is due to be
replaced by a luxury real estate development.
Hare Krishna followers and traditional Hindus
have voiced concern about the future of their
communities if a new center is not found. In April,
Moscow City Hall promised to provide an alternative site
for the construction of a Vedic cultural center,
including a place of worship for Krishna adepts. The new
center, a 52 meter high building of 10,000 square
meters, is set to become one of the largest Hindu
temples outside India. However, the plan has been
criticized by some Russians, apparently unhappy with an
idea to have a major Hindu temple in downtown Moscow.
On Thursday, Vajpayee was due to head for
Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, on the second leg
of a week-long three-nation tour that also includes
Syria. Vajpayee's visit to Dushanbe is seen as
highlighting India's efforts to increase engagement in
Central Asia.
In yet another sign of greater
engagement, earlier this month Indian Defense Minister
George Fernandes traveled to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
He reportedly pledged to help Kyrgyzstan combat Islamic
terrorism, stating that "both our countries face
identical threats".
Delhi co-sponsored a major
gathering, an India-Central Asia three-day regional
conference in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent on November
6-8. "For us, Central Asia is our immediate strategic
neighborhood," Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha
said in his keynote address during the conference. Sinha
also called for greater economic engagement between
India and Central Asia.
(Copyright 2003 Asia
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