India backs Rabbani on Taliban talks; will discuss issue with Clinton next week

External affairs minister SM Krishna of India shaking hands with Prof Burhanuddin Rabbani, chairman of the Afghanistan high peace council, in New Delhi on Thursday

New Delhi

14 July 2011

Burhanuddin Rabbani, who heads a panel which has the Afghanistan government's mandate to negotiate peace with the Taliban, would not mind using the good offices of India for finding a political solution to the strife in his country.

India is an important country in the region and we want its cooperation in peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, Mr Rabbani said on the occasion of his talks with external affairs minister SM Krishna in New Delhi on Thursday.

Mr Rabbani is on a four-day visit to India.

Afghans should not be victims in the hands of others to be used against the Afghan people themselves, Mr Rabbani said without elaborating. He noted that regional countries had a role in promoting peace in Afghanistan.

India was expected to discuss the situation in Afghanistan with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton when she visits New Delhi next week.

Talking to journalists, US charge d'affaires Peter Burleigh said Afghanistan could figure "prominently" in the Clinton-Krishna talks, in which the relations between and among the US, India and Pakistan would be "thoroughly covered".

Burleigh described the Taliban reconciliation talks as a "very important issue" for the US and India alike.

The US was keeping India informed of the substance of the "very preliminary discussions" that have taken place with the Taliban interlocutors.

The diplomat went on to note that the negotiations for "reaching an understanding" with "some Taliban elements" were making "slow process", and the talks could be expected to "continue for months".

"[The US is] continuing to explore [and it] will keep India directly informed and also seek advice," Mr Burleigh said.

The situation in west Asia, north Africa, and east- and south-east Asia, was also likely to be discussed in the second strategic dialogue between Clinton and Krishna on July 19.

Replying to a question about the possible implications of the US losing out on a multi-billion tender for fighter jets for the Indian Air Force, on the defence cooperation with India, Mr Burleigh said "one contract here and there [does not] make or break [the] relationship" and that the US was in it for the long-term.

'India has tried to deal with the BNP and Begum Khaleda Zia of Bangladesh in the past but it takes two to tango'

India’s obsession with Pakistan is hurting its ties with Bangladesh and other neighbours, says Deb Mukharji, a former Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh, in an interview to Ramesh Ramachandran.

Click on the following ink for reading the full text of the interview: http://interviews-by-ramesh-ramachandran.blogspot.com .

India, Iran discuss trilateral cooperation with Afghanistan; issue of oil payments nowhere near resolution

From left: Nirupama Rao, foreign secretary of India; Mohd Ali Fathollahi, Iran's deputy foreign
minister for Asian and Asia-Pacific affairs; and Ali Akbar Salehi, foreign minister of Iran

New Delhi

6 July 2011

Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao discussed trilateral cooperation among India, Iran and Afghanistan in her talks in Tehran, signalling a movement beyond mere articulation of positions to possibly a structured consultation on the situation in Afghanistan.

Ms Rao called on foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Tuesday and held talks with deputy foreign minister for Asian and Asia-Pacific affairs Mohd Ali Fathollahi. She met with Saeed Jalili, secretary of Iran's supreme

national security council, on Wednesday.

The situation in the Arab world, anti-piracy cooperation and consular issues were among other issues that Ms Rao discussed in her talks with Mr Fathollahi, who first mooted the trilateral cooperation during his visit to India in August 2010.

Ms Rao's visit to Iran followed that of national security adviser Shivshankar Menon in March, on the eve of the Persian New Year.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has shied away from visiting Iran but an opportunity could present itself in 2012 when Iran hosts the NAM Summit.

Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao with Saeed Jalili, secretary of Iran's supreme

national security council

Ms Rao's visit comes amid India's continuing search for an amicable solution for crude-oil payments to Iran. Iran has been selling crude to India on credit (the outstandings are over Rs 4,400 crore) since December 2010, when the Reserve Bank of India discontinued the practice of routing payments through a regional clearinghouse called the Asian Clearing Union in view of the US sanctions on Iran.

India switched to the services of the German-Iranian Europaish-Iranische Handelk AG (EIH) bank based in Hamburg but the European Union's sanctions against the bank in May forced Germany to terminate the facility. Petroleum and natural gas minister Jaipal Reddy has said that efforts were being made to ensure uninterrupted oil supplies from Iran. Iran is India's second largest source of imports after Saudi Arabia.

Ms Rao's visit came a year to the day since her July 5, 2010 speech in New Delhi in which she spoke about India pursuing its ties with Iran independent of the US, making accelerated efforts" to complete infrastructure projects, and how India was "justifiably concerned that the extra-territorial nature of certain unilateral sanctions recently imposed by individual countries" could adversely affect India's energy security.

The bilateral ties have remained in disrepair since 2005 when India voted against Iran in the IAEA.

India, Netherlands FMs discuss new NSG rules, but statement skirts issue

New Delhi

5 July 2011

A statement issued after external affairs minister SM Krishna's talks with his Dutch counterpart Uri Rosenthal in New Delhi on Tuesday was silent on the new Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines limiting the sale of sensitive enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies to NPT signatories only. However, the issue was understood to have been discussed in the meeting, coming as it did less than a fortnight after the NSG plenary at Noordwijk in the Netherlands, which concluded on June 24.

The Netherlands is currently the chair of the 46-member NSG.

India has not signed the NPT, and, therefore, it views the revised guidelines as impinging on the clean waiver it got from the NSG in September 2008. The guidelines have not been published in open text as yet, but the Dutch minister's visit here would have served India to fully discuss them and draw appropriate conclusions from it. The sentiment in the NSG on India's quest for the membership of the group, and the sale of two new reactors by China to Pakistan, were understood to have been discussed, too. In May, foreign secretary Nirupama Rao had met with the NSG Troika, comprising the Netherlands, New Zealand and Hungary, in The Hague.

The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, West Asia, North Africa, and UN reforms figured in their discussions, too. The Dutch minister had visited Afghanistan before arriving in New Delhi. The Netherlands was the first NATO ally to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan in August 2010, but it was helping in training the Afghan security forces, which India was doing, too.

Meanwhile, France reiterated its commitment to full civil nuclear cooperation with India in all aspects, including, but not limited to, nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear fuel. In his second statement in five days, France's ambassador to India Jerome Bonnafont said, " ... nothing in the existing and future guidelines shall be interpreted as detracting from that exemption or reducing the ambition of our bilateral cooperation."

He qualified it by saying that the scope of bilateral civil nuclear cooperation would be consistent with France's national policies and international obligations, including the NPT. The reiteration by France follows foreign secretary Nirupama Rao's interview to an Indian television channel in which she hinted that India could choose not to buy nuclear reactors from countries that would not sell ENR technologies to it.