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 and US agree to disagree on China, too

New Delhi

22 May 2011

A "national consensus across the board" was required on whether China is "a threat or is [it] a neighbour that we can go along with", former national security adviser MK Narayanan had posed three years ago, delivering the 25th Air Chief Marshal PC Lal Memorial Lecture here.

Much water has flown down the Brahmaputra since then, but China has remained reluctant to resolve the boundary question. There is no explicit agreement on the issue of stapled visa, either. China's foray into Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) has further roiled the Sino-Indian discourse, all of which forced New Delhi to tweak the Dragon's tail, first by feting Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo in Norway, and then by omitting any reference to one-China from the joint statement issued towards the end of Premier Wen Jiabao's visit here in December 2010.

Today, just when New Delhi was coming around to the view that its relationship with Beijing was indeed "adversarial" in many respects, and, therefore, it required to be handled with prudence and firmness, comes sobering news from an American official and an academic that only reinforces what Admiral Robert Willard, head of the US Pacific Command, had said during his visit here in September 2010.

The Admiral had told journalists that the US shared India's concerns about China's assertiveness and its presence in PoK, but while "any change in military relations or military manoeuvres by China that raises concerns of India" could certainly be considered as occurring within his area of responsibility, India will have to tackle its issues on its own.

Michael Auslin from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, told this correspondent in New Delhi that the issues of stapled visa and Jammu and Kashmir were problems between India on the one hand and China and Pakistan on the other, unlike the South China Sea, which was a global common. Auslin noted that the contours of US-China ties had of late changed from "engage, then hedge" to "hedge, then engage."

A further indication of where Washington stood on India's core issues was provided by an American official who insisted that the US-China relations was neither an either/or case nor a friend-or-foe choice. This official said it was "only natural" that as China rises, it becomes assertive; that "confrontation is not inevitable", and both the US and China had much to gain from cooperation than conflict.

By India's own admission, the challenge of fashioning a coherent China policy is made difficult by the cold reality, brought home after Osama bin Laden's killing, that Pakistan's strategic value to the US will likely remain; India was alone in its fight against terrorism, and that Washington could not be expected to fight New Delhi's battles.

Save for former US national security adviser Gen James Jones (Retd)'s remark about how lucky the US was to have Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who took "personal risk along the Pakistani-Indian border to make sure that there's no provocation", there has been no recompense for India or the 26/11 victims.

The dissonance between India and the US also extends to Afghanistan and Iran. India's abstention on Libya vote, and rejection of US aircraft from a multi-billion dollar tender, have accentuated the divergences.