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Jaswant heading for Myanmar : Eye on Musharraf’s visit |
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Days ahead of External affairs Minister Jaswant Singh’s visit to Myanmar (Burma) the Pakistan Chief Executive Gen. Pervez Musharraf is paying a three-day visit to Yangon from January 4. The visit will be watched by New Delhi very keenly. Yangon watchers believe that Pakistan wants to run a reality check on its relations with Myanmar following latter’s growing multi-faceted bilateral engagement with India. General Maung Aye, vice-chairman of Myanmar’s state Peace and Development council, visited New Delhi in November and requested for assistance in the infrastructure development. Gen. Aye also sought assistance in development of deep sea ports and offered to sell natural gas. Highly placed sources in the Government point out that Gen. Musharraf’s mission to Myanmar includes exploring the possibility of expanding its arms supply to it. Not surprisingly, Gen. Musharraf’ delegation includes Mr. Javed Hasan, an Army officer, in-charge of weapons and equipment. The Pakistani delegation is likely to offer small arms and mortars to Myanmar’s mainly infantry-dominated army.
India is well aware of Pakistan’s pronounced emphasis on arms supply to wrest diplomatic advantages recently. Analysts point out that Gen. Musharraf made skillful use of “arms diplomacy” by providing weapons to Sri Lanka in order to acquire a larger political profile in the island nation. Pakistan’s military ties wit Myanmar are not new. It has recently supplied arms and ammunition worth $2.5 million. These weapons had been transferred in two consignments during March and April 1999. Since both countries possess Chinese-origin weaponry, a Pakistani offer of certain spares and maintenance support o Yangon is not ruled out. Pakistan has also trained personnel from the Myanmarese Army and the Air Force in some of its establishment and has since mid-1995, revived intelligence links with it. On the political side, India apprehends that Pakistan is seeking a “toe-hold” in Myanmar, with a long term objective of encouraging insurgency in the North-East. India is aware of reports about Pakistani attempts to acquire a physical presence at Haka in Myanmar’s Chin state where it proposes to establish an air field.
Since 1989, Pakistan has tried to work for closer ties with Myanmar. After an initial low-key phase, by 1995, Pakistan had established intelligence links with Yangon and had trained Myanmar’s Air Force and Army personnel. Under the on-going defence cooperation between the two, Pakistan had supplied 2.5 million dollars worth arms and ammunition, in two consignments, in March-April last year. Given the fact that both the countries have a lot of Chinese equipment, the ties on this front are expected to get a boost with the General’s visit, defence analysts believe. The Indian perception of a political interaction between yangon and Islamabad is that Pakistani interest is oriented towards keeping insurgency alive in the North-East. However, India is not unduly bothered about Musharraf’s visit as it has already offered cooperation to Myanmar on all fronts, including defence. Analysts feel that Jaswant Singh’s trip will go a long way in “correcting Yangon’s tilt’ towards Islamabad. During his visit, Singh is expected to inaugurate 160-km long road stretch from Tamu (on Manipur border ) to Kalewa (close to Mandalay). This road is a part of the ambitious Asian high project. New Delhi in the recent past has adopted a pragmatic approach towards Myanmar’s military junta. At the heart of this policy is its desire to develop the northeastern states and curb insurgency along its eastern borders. New Delhi has already indicated to yangon that as long as its security concerns are addressed it has no problems in Myanmar warming up to Pakistan.
Myanmar is an important neighbor and that the nurturing of relations with that country is of political, strategic and security interest to India. As remarked by former Foreign Minister. Mr. J.N. Dixit, India’s relations with Myanmar had been ambiguous and distant for nearly three decades. They are reviving just now. Recalling more recent history of our relations with this country is important. Indo-Myanmar relations went into a negative spin in 1990, when the military authorities of Myanmar refused to accept the 1990 electoral verdict of the Burmese people in which Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National league for Democracy, emerged victorious.
India’s commitment to democracy created distances with Myanmar as a result. In any case, the V P Singh and Chandra Sekhar governments were so enmeshed in domestic political uncertainties that they were not able to structure a cohesive foreign policy with a clear sense of priorities. It must be underlined that the government of Myanmar dealt with India’s critical reaction to their assuming power with sobriety. Western powers like the United states, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan, tried to generate political pressure on the military regime of Myanmar at the political level to give up power to Aung San Suu Kyi. These powers also formally requested India to join their embassies in Yangon to present a formal protest to the military regime for its not respecting the results of the elections. While India did not join them, India did convey its disappointment at the negation of democracy in Myanmar through bilateral diplomatic channels.
The considerations which influenced India to review relations with Myanmar were, first, Myanmar’s geostrategic importance for India, Myanmar abuts on our sensitive northeastern states and portions of Bangladesh. Myanmar shares an equally significant border with China. Thus the northern frontiers of Myanmar constitute a trijunction with Bangladesh, China and the eastern frontiers of India. Myanmar is also an important country on the rim of the Bay of Bengal, laying astride India’s southeastern trade routes. The southeastern coast of Myanmar is close enough to the Andaman and Nicobar islands of India, so developments in that area should affect our security interest in the Bay of Bengal. Indo-Myanmar cooperation to counter drug smuggling, narcotics crimes, insurgency and security threats to India’s northeastern states was acknowledged as imperatives for our foreign policy. It was equally important to ensure that Myanmar does not become part of an exclusive area of influence of other powers in the region with whom India has uneasy relations. China, for instance. This is an objective which would be shared by the people and governments of Myanmar also with a view to maintaining their independence and freedom of options in dealing with their foreign policy and security concerns.
It was, therefore, considered necessary to normalize relations with Myanmar regardless of the kind of government in power there. While India remains committed to democracy and related values, there was no reason for India to unilaterally assume responsibility of creating democracies in other countries. This had to be the choice and responsibility of the people of the country concerned, in this case the people of Myanmar. Preliminary discussions were held between the government of India and the Myanmar foreign office between February and August, 1992.
The Chinese had already built an all-weather road from Kunming in China to Mandalay in Myanmar which they were planning to extend to Yangon. There were also reports of the Myanmar government providing some visiting and berthing facilities to the Chinese navy. When these points were raised with the Burmese authorities they responded by saying that they would be ready to accept India’s assistance in building up the transportation network in their country. They indicated that they would like India making the road from Imphal and Mandalay and then on to Yangon as a parallel to the Chinese road-building activities. They denied any military facilities being given to China and added that they would be willing to give general facilities to the Indian navy also in their ports and on their coast. There have been visits of the home secretaries, the Controller of Drugs and the Ministers of Commerce between the two countries between 1993 and now. Myanmar becoming a part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Asian Regional Forum over the last five years adds to the legitimacy of the Myanmar government in the eyes of other governments in the region and lends validity to our having relations with that country.
The visit of General Maung Aye was, therefore, timely and strengthen our bilateral relations. The visit will increase Indo-Myanmar cooperation to prevent insurgency along the 1,600 kilometre sensitive Indo-Myanmar border. Myanmar has problems with Kachins, and we have problems with Naga separatists. There is an extensive complementarity of needs in the economic, commercial and technological spheres between Myanmar and India. Activating economic and technological cooperation was an important objective of this visit. If India speeds up the building of the Imphal-Tamu-Kaleayo road, a true beginning would be made to consolidate Myanmar as a land bridge between India and the Southeast Asian countries.
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