India gives Shanghai the cold
shoulder By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - At the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) summit in Shanghai and the
Conference on Interactions and Confidence-building
Measures in Asia (CICA) at Almaty in Kazakhstan
this week, India is being represented not by Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, but by Minister for
Petroleum and Natural Gas Murli Deora.
India's low-key representation at these
important summits seems to be aimed at placating
Washington ahead of the US Congress vote on an
India-US nuclear deal on civilian cooperation over
nuclear energy.
The SCO is a six-member
regional grouping including China, Russia,
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
The
six
members are represented by their presidents at the
summit. India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia have
observer status in the SCO. With the exception of
India, the other three observers are represented
by their heads of state as well. Afghanistan
President Hamid Karzai is also attending the meet
as a guest.
It is not that the SCO does
not matter to India. India had lobbied hard to get
into the grouping and it was with Russian backing
that Delhi obtained observer status. It has now
applied for full member status in the grouping, as
has Iran.
Downplaying its low-profile
representation at the Shanghai summit, an official
in India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) told
Asia Times Online that there was no need for the
prime minister to attend the meet as India was
only an observer in the grouping.
He
pointed out that last year India was represented
at the SCO meet in the Kazakh capital, Astana, by
its then external affairs minister, Natwar Singh.
And now that it does not have a full-time external
affairs minister - Manmohan holds the portfolio at
present - the government is being represented by
the petroleum minister.
Originally formed
to resolve frontier problems between China and its
post-Soviet neighbors, the SCO has since evolved
as a grouping to promote regional security and has
expanded its reach into counter-terrorism,
defense, energy and economic cooperation.
Given India's considerable interest on
these issues and its significant stakes in the
Central Asian region - it is an important player
in the region, has a military base in Tajikistan
and is eyeing its vast gas resources - one would
have expected Manmohan to show up at Shanghai.
This was an opportunity for the prime
minister to engage with a galaxy of key figures,
including Russian President Vladimir Putin,
Chinese President Hu Jintao and Pakistan President
General Pervez Musharraf. If the prime minister
was unable to attend, the government should have
sent Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee, given the
centrality of security in the SCO's agenda.
According to the MEA official, Deora was
leading the Indian delegation to the SCO summit as
the grouping was also focused on energy - a vital
component of India's diplomacy in recent years.
Indeed, the quest for energy security occupies an
important place in India's diplomacy.
While in Shanghai, Deora is expected to
remind his Kazakh counterpart of the pending
decision of Kazakhstan to offer 50% stake in one
of the two exploration blocks it had asked India's
ONGC Videsh to study.
However, the reasons
for the downgraded representation are more
complicated. It appears that with the US Congress
vote on the India-US nuclear deal coming up, India
does not want to be seen hanging out with a group
that is rapidly acquiring an anti-US image. Delhi
does not want to take chances by ruffling
Washington's feathers at this critical juncture.
Western analysts often dismiss the SCO as
a mere "talking shop" and draw attention to SCO's
"irrelevance as an anti-US containment front". But
Washington is nonetheless wary of the grouping. It
may be recalled that at the Almaty summit last
year, the SCO, perhaps under pressure from Russia
and China, called on the US to set a deadline for
the withdrawal of American military personnel from
the region.
Although the SCO maintains
that it is not directed against any country, an
anti-US thrust is clearly visible in its
orientation. According to commentators, Russia and
China seem to regard the SCO as a means to contain
American presence in the region as well as to
counter its unilateralism.
What has
compounded Washington's worries now is that Iran,
which has observer status in the grouping, would
get a boost at the summit. Iran has indicated that
it is ready to join SCO as a full-fledged member.
Washington's unease with the SCO's cozying
up to Iran was evident early this month when US
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld criticized
Russia and China for seeking to draw Iran closer
to the SCO. "It strikes me as strange that one
would want to bring into an organization that says
it's against terrorism ... one of the leading
terrorist nations in the world, Iran," Rumsfeld
said.
Zhang Deguang, secretary general of
the SCO, responded to Rumsfeld's comment by
stating that he did not consider Iran a terrorist
state. The SCO's defense of Iran has obviously
annoyed the US.
And now, Ahmadinejad is
attending the Shanghai summit. While the Iran
nuclear crisis isn't on the agenda of the formal
summit, it has figured prominently in the
bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit
between Ahmadinejad, Hu and Putin. A warm embrace
of Ahmadinejad by the SCO will be confirmation for
the US that the SCO is indeed an anti-US bloc.
Delhi clearly does not want to be seen to
be an enthusiastic partner in a bloc that
Washington sees as anti-US. Not when the nuclear
deal is just months away from being put before the
US Congress for its approval.
Getting the
nuclear deal through is a top priority for India.
To this end it has made drastic shifts in its
foreign policy, taking a pro-US line in the Iran
nuclear controversy for instance. It voted in
favor of an International Atomic Energy Agency
resolution to report Iran's nuclear program to the
UN Security Council, defying fierce opposition
from the left parties in India.
India
could have abstained if it did not want to be seen
to be challenging the US position. However, in a
bid to signal to the US that it was a reliable
ally it went a step further and voted against
Iran.
Both the Indian and the US
governments are working hard to push the nuclear
deal through. India is rallying support among
congressmen and Indian Americans are lobbying
aggressively to ensure that Congress ratifies the
deal.
At a time when every vote in
Congress counts, India is anxious not to be seen
as an unreliable ally and more importantly as an
irresponsible nuclear power. It is keen not to be
seen to be holding hands with Iran at this point -
hence the decision to cold-shoulder the SCO
summit.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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