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US heat over India’s support to Iran |
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Har Jeet Singh
Next only to the Indo-US agreement on cooperation in civilian nuclear energy, Iran’s nuclear weapons programme was the other major issue which came up for discussion during the thirty-minute meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Bush. The US quest for Indian support came in the background of the coming meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna on Sept. 19 where the US is lobbying for a unanimous resolution to be passed to refer Iran to the UN Security Council for sanctions now that all the EU-3 efforts to sell a package deal to Iran in return for its shutting off its nuclear weapons programme have failed. Unlike in the Security Council, at the IAEA governing Board, of which India is also a member, Non-Aligned countries control 16 of the 35 seats and as such the support of India, an important NAM country will encourage other developing nations to back the United States.
The Prime Minister was clear in India’s stand when he told President Bush that India continues to believe that Iran was under an obligation to fulfil all international commitments. It was also India’s view that another nuclear State in its neighbourhood was not desirable. However, he also drew attention to the fact that India had the world’s second largest Shia population after Iran and India will have to keep this in mind while taking any extreme harsh stand against Iran.
Where India differed with the United States was on Bush’s view that the world should not wait and give any further ground to Iran,. Since Iran was being adamant on pursuing its nuclear power programme and had broken the seals of its Isfahan nuclear facility and resumed work, the only course left was economic sanctions against what Bush has designated as the Axis of Evil. As remarked by Prime minister Manmohan Singh both during talks as well as in the subsequent press conference, “diplomacy must be given the maximum scope” to sort out the issue.
The Bush Administration is, however, dangling the civilian nuclear technology as the carrot to persuade India to abandon support to Iran’s nuclear programme as well as give up any thought of pursuing the gas pipeline deal. This message was clearly conveyed at last week’s Congressional hearing when some law makers advocated a quid pro quo on Iran issue for possible clearance of the US-India nuclear pact. A Congressman, Tom Lantos, raged against India for siding with Teheran rather than Washington and virtually threatened to hold up the agreement if New Delhi did not toe the American line. Lantos, who is chairman of the House International Relations Committee warned that India’s failure to support US policies on strategic issues could endanger the proposed expansion of nuclear and security cooperation. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice too singled out India, Russia and China to cooperate with the European Union in negotiating with Iran on the nuclear issue.
It is thus clear that further fudging on Iran’s proliferation will severely undercut the support in the US Congress for the Bush Administration’s nuclear pact with India. In defence of the nuclear pact with India, the Bush Administration has cited two important political reasons. One, that India is a responsible nuclear weapon power that is opposed to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The other is that India is America’s political partner for peace and stability in Asia. India’s unwillingness to take a stand against Iran’s proliferation and its refusal to settle the differences with the IAEA will undercut both the arguments.
India’s problems, however, stem not only from the overt choices it will have to make but from the domestic fall-out too. Even before the Prime Minister landed back from New York, CPI[M] General Secretary Prakash Karat warned, India-Iran relations could not be held hostage to the United States.
New Delhi has to take a stand in a way that it does not harm India’s traditionally close ties which have seen upward momentum since the early ‘90s. The rise of Taliban, the deterioration of Pak-Iran relations over attacks on Shias and Iranian diplomats and the growing closeness of Pakistan with the United States were of great advantage to India in the development of relations with Iran which it would not like to lose. The gas pipeline deal is so important that even the US offer of energy dialogue to meet India’s growing energy requirements and the Indo-US nuclear deal has not had any impact on India’s decision to go ahead with it. Iran is also emerging as a trade corridor for India into Central Asia. It could serve India as the gateway for trade with Central Asian Republics. After refusal of Pakistan to allow transportation of Indian goods to Afghanistan through its territory, India and Iran are developing an alternative land route by which India would ship the goods to Chah Bahar port of Iran from where India will construct a rail link. In addition, India and Iran are working on a road link which will link Afghanistan and connect Iranian road network to the Afghanistan garland road network, and also enable trade traffic to move towards the Central Asian Republics and Russia.
India would, therefore, have to tread cautiously and move forward in a way that it is seen to be cooperating with the United States without doing any harm to its ties with Iran.
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