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    South Asia
     Jan 30, 2007
Page 1 of 2
Energy tops Indo-Russian priority list
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - The array of agreements signed last week during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to India indicates that while India might have warmed significantly to the United States over the past decade and dramatically since his last visit to the subcontinent, the India-Russia relationship hasn't cooled either.

Nine agreements in areas ranging from energy and space to business and culture were signed during Putin's fourth visit since he became president in 2000. Defense was at the core of the



India-Russia strategic relationship for decades. Energy security appears to have become a top priority.

India and Russia have signed a "memorandum of intent" on cooperation over civilian nuclear energy under which Moscow has promised to build four more reactors in Kudankulam in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and additional reactors at other sites in India. Russia is currently helping to build two units at Kudankulam.

This Russian commitment has come even as India and the US are negotiating the details of a bilateral agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation and changes to the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to enable the export of nuclear technology and systems to India.

The Russian commitment is provisional and subject to the NSG lifting restrictions on India. Both sides have stressed that the cooperation on civilian nuclear energy being envisaged will be subject to "their respective international commitments". As a member of the NSG, Russia cannot engage in nuclear trade with India until the NSG guidelines are amended.

However, the memorandum of intent that Moscow has signed even before the NSG gives its green signal is being seen in India as "highly significant". "Moscow can help New Delhi ensure the defeat of any attempt by a nuclear supplier to clutter the changed guidelines with extraneous and objectionable conditions," The Hindu, an influential English-language daily, observed in an editorial.

Except for a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when a chill gripped India's relationship with Russia under Boris Yeltsin, New Delhi's engagement with the Russians has always been warm. India has long regarded Russia as a reliable friend that stood by it in times of trouble. It was Russia that provided India with unwavering support in the United Nations Security Council on the Kashmir issue. It was Russian help that enabled India to lay the foundations of its heavy industry and build its military muscle.

Relations between Washington and Delhi might have improved considerably in recent years, but many here have not forgotten the way in which the Lyndon Johnson administration made food aid to India in the late 1960s conditional on India adopting policies dictated by Washington. Memories of the Richard Nixon administration sending the USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal at the height of the 1971 war in a show of support to Pakistan remain vivid among decision-makers in Delhi. Indians remember, too, that Washington went back on its contractual commitments with regard to supplying fuel to the Tarapur atomic-power plant in the wake of the nuclear tests at Pokhran in 1974.

The memorandum of intent on civilian nuclear cooperation signed during the Putin visit is not a recent Russian response to the India-US nuclear deal. Russia had agreed to set up six reactors at Kudankulam way back in 2000. The French also signaled interest in civilian nuclear-energy cooperation with India. But both countries were constrained from moving forward in this regard because of the NSG restrictions. It was necessary to get the US on board to make the required changes in the NSG guidelines. With the India-US civilian nuclear deal of 2005 setting in motion a process that is likely to culminate in changing the NSG guidelines with regard to civilian nuclear cooperation, opportunities for nuclear trade with India will open up for several countries.

The Russian offer ahead of the change in the NSG guidelines has annoyed sections in the US, which are interpreting the move as an attempt by Moscow to preempt US efforts to cut nuclear trade deals with India. Strategic analyst Raja Mohan, a strong supporter of the India-US nuclear deal, has dismissed such interpretations. He has described the Russian move as one that "merely complements the Bush initiative towards India". "New Delhi has no reason to cut out the American reactor suppliers after the Bush administration did all the heavy political lifting," he has argued.

Indian officials are careful in their interpretation of the India-Russia memorandum of intent on civilian nuclear cooperation. They insist that it is a Russian vote of confidence in India ahead of the amendment process in the NSG. "It is Russia standing by India, nothing else," an official in India's Ministry of External Affairs told

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Reviving the India-Russia partnership (Nov 14, '06)

 
 



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