Page 1 of
2 India on the front line in energy
war By M K Bhadrakumar
While the United
States has been stealthily finessing a pretext for
launching a military attack on Iran, it has
also been prevailing on its close allies and
friends to stay clear of bilateral political
exchanges with Tehran. Isolation and containment
of Iran and a "regime change" in that country have
become the leitmotif of US foreign policy in the
remaining two years of the presidency of George W
Bush.
But Washington either made an
exception for India, or India after
all didn't belong in the gallery of Washington's close
or "natural" allies. At any rate, New Delhi acted
in its best interests when Indian Foreign Minister
Pranab Mukherjee paid a two-day visit to Tehran on
February 6-7.
The timing of the visit was indeed sensitive.
It was only five days earlier, in testimony
before the US Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, that former US national security
adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski made an astounding
statement accusing the Bush administration
of plotting situations to justify war against Iran.
Someone of the stature of Brzezinski,
who has close connections with the US
intelligence community and security establishment,
wouldn't have made an irresponsible allegation.
Yet Mukherjee went ahead with the visit. He also
made it unequivocally clear in his media comments
that India is opposed to any use of force against
Iran.
Most importantly, apart from
underlining that expansion of relations with Iran
is important for India, Mukherjee described Iran
as a factor for stability in the region. That is to
say, India disregards Washington's propaganda that
Iran is aiding and abetting terrorism and is
threatening regimes in neighboring countries.
Equally, Mukherjee called for the Iran
nuclear file to be sent back to the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as the competent forum
to handle the issue. "A solution based on talks
and a peaceful approach can be realized through
close cooperation between Iran and the IAEA.
Besides, both sides should be flexible," he said.
In sum, Mukherjee made out with great poise and
resoluteness that New Delhi has its own
independent foreign policy toward the Iran nuclear
issue.
The main purpose of Mukherjee's
visit was to set a political climate in India's
bilateral relations with Iran that will be
conducive to the advancement of energy cooperation
between the two countries. Coming weeks and months
should testify whether the proposals for a gas
pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan and a
25-year deal on liquefied natural gas (LNG) will
gather pace or not. Difficulties still lie ahead.
Principally, Washington can be expected to do all
that is possible to ensure that New Delhi is
arrested on its current path. Subtle pressure
tactics seem to have already begun.
Speaking in Washington last week, the
powerful new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, Tom Lantos, who is well known for his
pro-Israel political stance and has consistently
warned India publicly in the past against cozying
up to Iran, fired a public salvo to the effect
that New Delhi must "fulfill its promises". He
said Delhi must keep its side of the bargain,
"which India is not doing", over the nuclear deal
with the US and that it is imperative that "we
have to work on that issue". Lantos said even a
"small country like Finland, for example, is
sticking to whatever promises it has made", and,
naturally, it behooved a "great country like
India" to deliver on its promises.
The
pro-Israel think-tank Heritage Foundation also
chipped in by calling for a robust intervention by
the Bush administration in the Kashmir issue and
India-Pakistan peace process in general, as
otherwise, "the US-India civil nuclear deal has
the potential to contribute to deepening tensions
in the region". The think-tank called on the US
administration to take up with New Delhi the
issues of human rights, economic development and
good governance in Jammu and Kashmir.
Curiously, the author of the Heritage report,
Lisa Curtis, is a former foreign-policy aide
to Senator Richard Lugar, the erstwhile Republican
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, and she previously worked as a
political analyst on South Asia in the Central
Intelligence Agency, apart from serving in the US
embassies in New Delhi and Islamabad in the 1990s.
In addition, unnamed US officials have
begun sounding impatient about the lack of
progress in the negotiation of the so-called 123
Agreement between India and the United States -
the final lap of the Indo-US nuclear deal. There
seem to be fears in Washington that India may be
dragging its feet and, in the process, Russia may
steal a march over US companies in supplying
nuclear plants to India. It is estimated that the
nuclear deal will generate US$80 billion in
downstream business.
How these tricky undercurrents play out will have a
bearing on the incipient Iran-India
energy cooperation, assuming that New Delhi will be plucky
enough to press ahead regardless of concerted US opposition.
Indeed, there are larger dimensions. In fact,
India-Iran energy cooperation forms a crucial
vector of emergent Asian security.
This
became apparent during the visit of Russian
President Vladimir Putin to New Delhi on January
25-26, where the focus was on all-around
cooperation between the two countries in the field
of energy. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
characterized energy security as "the most
important of the emerging dimensions" of the
Indo-Russian strategic partnership.
He
said, "Russia's position as a global leader on
energy issues is widely recognized. We look
forward to long-term partnership with Russia in
this vital field." Two working groups were
constituted to examine both upstream cooperation
(access for Indian participation in the funding,
exploration and development of oil and gas fields
in Russia) and downstream cooperation
(participation by Russian companies in marketing
oil products and LNG in India).
Moscow has
repeatedly shown interest in taking part in the
financing and construction of the Iran-India gas
pipeline. Russian Deputy Prime Minister and
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who accompanied
Putin to New Delhi, stated, "We are pegging big
hopes on the Gazprom-GAIL [Russian and Indian gas
companies] strategic partnership, including joint
efforts in building the Iran-Pakistan-India gas
pipeline."
For Pakistan's part, President
General Pervez Musharraf was recently in Tehran,
where he met with Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, and according to media statements,
the gas-pipeline project was discussed. "Now that
the pricing mechanism
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
