Frisking the Indian foreign minister at the airport security is not the right way to prepare for a crucial summit between heads of government of two countries that call each other “time-tested” allies. The ‘inadvertent act’ during Pranab Mukherjee’s recent visit to Moscow has left some red-faced officials in the two capitals and given detractors of the UPA government something to holler about. Reports in the media about the embarrassing incident and the fact that Mukherjee, and a few days later Defence Minister AK Antony, did not get to meet most key leaders in Russia, only made things worse.
President Vladimir Putin, it seems, was busy travelling to Iran when the two Indian Union ministers were in Moscow. His Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was pre-occupied with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and therefore, could not spare time for his Indian counterpart. To make up for the loss, Lavrov met Mukherjee a few weeks later on the sidelines of the trilateral meeting between India, Russia, and China in the Chinese city of Harbin.
The recent incidents involving the two countries are a clear indicator of the changing times and the need for re-interpreting Indo-Russian relations. “It is a new Russia that India is dealing with and we are also dealing with a new India,” a senior Russian diplomat said. However, many in the two countries still refuse to see each other in this new light. The agenda and priorities of both India and Russia have changed since the demise of the Soviet Union. Though the two countries crowd the talks-table with cooperation on a wide range of issues — from defence production, energy, trade and investment to science and technology — clearly, they cannot be held under the old terms. Commerce and economic interests have started playing, and will continue to play an important role in future relations between the two countries.
President Putin and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are scheduled to meet in Moscow in the second week of November. The summit will provide them an opportunity of ironing out the creases that may have appeared in the bilateral ties and also steer the relations in the required direction to deal with opportunities and challenges of the coming days.
One of the main thrust of their discussion will likely to be on cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear energy. The fate of the Indo-US nuclear deal now hangs in balance in face of stiff opposition from the Left parties and the UPA government’s decision to put it on hold for some time. Meanwhile, a keen Russia is trying to position itself in a way that if and when the restrictions are removed, it can move in to take advantage of the potentially huge Indian nuclear market.
Anil Kakodkar, chief of the Department of Atomic Energy, is scheduled to travel to Moscow. A high-level delegation from Russia is slated to come to New Delhi to firm up arrangements that can be the ‘Russian 123 agreement’ to do nuclear commerce with India.
The agreed ‘sequencing’ between India and the US is such that no real movement can take place till the American Congress approves the deal by an up-down vote in favour of the 123 agreement. The US does not want to end up in a situation where international restrictions are removed but its own domestic law prevents US companies from doing business with India.
Both Putin and Manmohan Singh meet against the backdrop of significant political developments that have taken place in their respective countries. Putin, whose presidential term comes to an end in March next year, might continue to run the show as the prime minister of Russia. But Singh’s political stocks have dropped sharply in the past weeks after the Congress decided to go slow on the nuclear deal. Like many others, perhaps Putin will also try to judge, whether it is Manmohan Singh or some other leader who will sit across the table at the next summit meeting.
(Cover Photo: With Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the ceremony for signing Russian-Indian documents. Credit: en.kremlin.ru)