India oils its Saudi Arabia
ties By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - It has taken a half century
for a Saudi monarch to visit India but the main
guest for the country's Republic Day celebrations
on January 26 will be King Abdullah bin Abdul
Aziz.
King Saud was the last monarch from
Saudi Arabia to visit New Delhi - in 1955 - and
the record of Indian leaders traveling to the
kingdom hasn't been much better. Former prime
ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi
visited Saudi Arabia in 1956 and 1982
respectively, though Cold War alignments made the
two nations extremely suspicious of each other.
The arrival of King Abdullah, who is also
prime minister and hence head of government as
well, is not a routine matter. A foreign head of
state or government being invited to be chief
guest at the
Republic Day parade in the
heart of India's capital that showcases India's
military might as well as democratic traditions,
is considered a measure of the importance India
attaches to its relationship with a country. Saudi
Arabia remains important to India as home to Mecca
and Medina, the holiest shrines to the 150 million
Indian Muslims. The country hosts more than 1.5
million Indian passport holders, the largest
expatriate community in Saudi Arabia. However, New
Delhi wants to ensure that bridges with Saudi
Arabia move beyond religion and employment.
One important aspect is energy security.
India's engagement with Riyadh is the result of a
well thought out process at a time when New
Delhi's relations with Iran are pegged on the way
Washington perceives Tehran, and Iraq remains in
tatters. India for a long time has enjoyed ties
with Iran and Iraq, which have helped it meet its
energy requirements. However, in the context of
Tehran's aggressive anti-Western tirades,
independent nuclear program, and the occupation of
Iraq, India has been looking to extend its
influence beyond the Persian Gulf to the Saudi
peninsula.
It is apparent that India does
not want to be held hostage for its oil needs to
Iran, which threatened to renege on some of its
oil and gas supply commitments after the September
vote at the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), when New Delhi aligned with Western powers
against Tehran. The next IAEA vote is due November
24, with hectic diplomatic parleys already under
way. As part of ongoing maneuvering, Iran's Deputy
Foreign Minister, Mehdi Safari, is scheduled to be
in New Delhi this week to speak with the
government, while at the same time the US has
repeatedly emphasized the importance it attaches
to India's support on the Iran issue.
It
is in this context that the Saudi kingdom has
become one of the most important countries to
ensure India's energy security and leverage
against Iran if the need arises. The combination
of high economic growth and dwindling domestic oil
resources have considerably raised India's
reliance on imported crude, which presently meets
more than 70% of its requirements. Riyadh remains
the largest supplier of oil to India. Saudi Arabia
is the largest oil producer in the world at 8.8
million barrels a day in 2004 and is the main
force in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC), which ultimately decides world
oil prices.
New Delhi has quietly engaged
Riyadh in the recent past despite the big-ticket
announcements between New Delhi and Tehran on oil
and gas deals, which include the proposed
Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. Finance Minister
P Chidambaram visited Riyadh in April, and
Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar went to
Saudi Arabia in March.
Saudi Petroleum
Minister Ali Al-Naimi visited New Delhi in January
to attend the first round table of Asian ministers
on regional cooperation in the oil and gas
economy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has
considerable knowledge of the workings of Riyadh,
having visited Saudi Arabia as finance minister in
December 1994.
Some observers say there
has also been a shift in Riyadh's perception of
India, from that of a poor country to that of a
market that needs to be explored. "The visit of
King Abdullah is the culmination of a process that
has been under way for several years," a former
Indian ambassador to Saudi Arabia has been quoted
as saying. "Its strategic significance lay in the
fact that Saudi Arabia is no longer linking its
relationship with India to ties with Pakistan."
Of equal importance to India is the Saudi
shift from its past of promoting radical and
jihadi Islamists like Osama bin Laden and the
Saudi perpetrators of the September 11, 2001
attacks. The intricate web developed by Saudi
intelligence to wage jihad against the erstwhile
Soviet Union in the early 1980s in Afghanistan has
been well documented. However, there is a
realization that such efforts have eaten away the
innards of Saudi society. Terrorism has since
turned on Riyadh, with the country now a victim of
the monster it helped create.
The Saudi
decision to take on Islamic radicals who promote
terror is critical for India. India will look to
Riyadh for security inputs to tackle terror
outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), which
continues to draw cadres and monetary assistance
from Saudi Arabia. The Indian police claim to have
busted the LeT members who orchestrated last
month's triple bomb attack in New Delhi that left
more than 70 dead and 200 injured. The man who
helped found the LeT, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, is
reportedly a resident of Saudi Arabia.
Indian agencies will be seeking the
cooperation of Riyadh to investigate the
international nature of such crimes. It is due to
improved relations with the United Arab Emirates
that India has managed to plug holes in the
dragnet for underworld figures who perpetrate
crimes in the country, including terror attacks.
The perception of India in Europe as a
"responsible" nation has also led to the
extradition of dreaded gangster Abu Salem from
Portugal, which is expected to lead to several
breakthroughs including crucial information about
the 1993 Mumbai blasts that killed more than 250
people and injured at least 1,000.
It is
recognition of the structural changes in Saudi
Arabia as well as its commitment to help poor
countries that has resulted in the kingdom's
recent admission to the World Trade Organization
(WTO). Riyadh applied to be member of the WTO
(then know as the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade, or GATT ) more than a decade ago. Much of
the delay in the membership talks has been due to
economic issues, but there is also a political
aspect. Washington has said that membership will
boost reform in the Muslim country, and that the
kingdom has explicitly undertaken to allow trade
with all WTO members, including Israel - which
remains subject to a formal boycott by many Arab
countries.
India has welcomed Saudi
membership of the WTO. In a statement, New Delhi
said: "You can't keep a very important country
like Saudi Arabia, which has a fourth of the
world's oil reserves, out of the multilateral
system. By their accession, the global trading
system is strengthened, becomes more predictable."
According to a comment in the Hindustan
Times: "The visit [of King Abdullah to New Delhi]
is as much a part of a larger realignment of
India's foreign and security policy as that of
Saudi Arabia. The manifestations of the Indian
change have been visible through the year in
breakthrough agreements with the US, Japan, China
and the EU, as well as the emphasis being placed
on economic diplomacy with ASEAN (Association of
Southeast Asian Nations) and SAARC (South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation). The Saudi
shift, no less dramatic, has been marked by its
battles with domestic radical Islamists and
underscored by a monarchical succession. It has
been marked most recently by the Saudi admission
to the World Trade Organization."
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
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2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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