Russia trips over Indian defense
ties By Tara Shankar Sahay
NEW DELHI - Defense cooperation between
India and Russia, which in recent years has
included joint-development of cruise missiles, hit
an air pocket when visiting Russian Defense
Minister Sergei Ivanov insisted on an intellectual
property rights (IPR) agreement between the former
Cold War allies.
A "friendly warning" on
the issue was delivered by Ivanov during his
four-day visit last week to witness Indo-Russian
war games carried out in the deserts of western
Rajasthan state involving elite troops and
state-of-the-art equipment.
Russian
anxiety in clinching the IPR agreement was
apparent when Ivanov went to the extent of hinting
that future defense cooperation with India, which
has dramatically increased military ties with the
United States over the past two years, would hinge
on a formal IPR
agreement.
Ivanov also made a pointed
reference to the fact that the issue figured
prominently during President Vladimir Putin's
visit to India last year and that since then there
has been little movement on the issue.
"I
think that it [IPR agreement] is under the active
consideration of the Ministry of Defense," said
Commodore Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the
state-funded think tank, Institute of Defense
Studies and Analyses (IDSA ). "They [the Russians]
are giving us military hardware that we need and
their anxiety in this context is understandable,"
he told Inter Press Service (IPS).
Ivanov
said the two countries had outstripped the old,
client-provider relationship on the weapons front
after they jointly developed the sophisticated
BrahMos cruise missile, which is said to be
superior to the US Tomahawak cruise missile in
many respects.
Multi-million dollar
contracts signed with Russia in recent years
include those for licensed production of the
advanced Sukhoi-30MKI fighter, the T-90S main
battle tank, stealth frigates for the Indian navy
and the purchase of an aircraft carrier.
Indian President A P J Abdul Kalam
personally favors aggressive joint-marketing of
the BrahMos missile, which is a product of the two
countries' joint research and development
establishments, and already there are firm orders
from 10 countries.
Kalam himself is a top
rocket scientist and a former chief of India's
secretive defense Research and Development
Organization, which shared equal credit with the
Russians for the development of the missile that
is to be marketed by the joint-venture BrahMos
Aerospace.
BrahMos is a supersonic
anti-ship cruise missile with a 300-kilometer
range. It can be launched from air, submarine or
land and can turn 360 degrees, generating concern
on the Indian sub-continent, particularly from
long-time military rival Pakistan.
The
post Cold War era saw Russia doing away with a
rupee-rouble arrangement and insisting that India
pay for up to 70% of defense purchases in hard
cash. Russia still provides India the bulk of its
military hardware and Ivanov himself pegged the
figure at 40%.
Explaining Russia's
insistence on India signing the IPR agreement with
it, Pravin Sawhney, defense analyst and editor of
the national security magazine Force, said:
"Moscow is impatient because it is the first time
that it has gone on the partnership mode with
India in the area of joint defense production, but
is apprehensive that its cutting-edge technology
could be leaked out to a third party."
"Moscow wants to monitor its end-use
restriction and also ensure that there is no
internal proliferation," Sawhney pointed out in an
IPS interview.
His reference to "internal
proliferation" alluded, for instance, to the
possibility of India using certain cutting-edge
technologies, such as those pertaining to
cryogenic engines for space launches being used to
develop inter-continental ballistic missiles.
A senior Defense Ministry official,
unwilling to be named, contended that with the
Indian government now shopping for arms from
countries such as Israel and the US, Moscow was
bound to be apprehensive.
It is no secret
that Russia resents Israel's emergence as a major
arms supplier to India. During September 2003,
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited India
and discussed provision of the coveted Phalcon
airborne early warning system and the
anti-ballistic Arrow missile, which New Delhi
feels must be an indispensable part of its armory
to negate possible nuclear attack from Pakistan.
The Russians have noted that Israel now
annually supplies US$2 billion worth of military
hardware to India.
Also, on July 18,
President George W Bush signed an accord with
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledging to
help India gain access to international civilian
nuclear technology, although this country has
refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, another vestige of the Cold War.
The agreement, which awaits Congressional
approval, was seen by many as the final weaning
away of India into the Western camp after decades
of isolation - featuring embargoes on the export
to this country of "dual-use" technologies,
especially those relating to space and nuclear
applications.
Sawhney, however, has no
doubt that the IPR agreement between New Delhi and
Moscow will fructify in a few months because "we
want the sophisticated Russian technology now,
whereas earlier we preferred arms in large numbers
over top-grade quality in view of our country's
large size."
He says the Russian waiver of
an earlier demand that the IPR agreement be
implemented with retrospective effect (from the
Soviet era onwards) has benefited India greatly,
considering the vast amounts of defense technology
and equipment transferred to this country during
the Cold War years.
Sharing Sawhney's
views was defense expert and former Jawaharlal
Nehru University professor, S Sreedhar Rao. "India
is aware about its international obligations,
especially when it comes to time-tested friendly
countries. We are minutely scrutinizing the IPR
agreement and in a vast country like ours,
implementing it is going to take some time," Rao
told IPS.
Top Indian defense analysts like
C Raja Mohan have highlighted the inevitability of
Russia fending off growing competition in the
Indian defense market and adapting the old
Indo-Russian defense cooperation to the new
realities in the region.
The reminder from
Ivanov, of the sensitive IPR issue on joint
Indo-Russian defense production, is seen as a
minor prickle in relations between the two
countries, given that there is too much at stake
for both.
Ultimately, analysts believe,
Russia will continue to be India's main arms
supplier for reasons of integration built up over
decades, while Russia cannot find as lucrative and
as big a market as India for its defense
production.
