Round The World

New Delhi, 5 November 2008

mukherji’s Iran Visit

India in Damage-Control Mode

By Monish Tourangbam

School of International Studies (JNU)

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee showcased diplomatic correctness at its height during his recently-concluded Tehran visit. Mukherjee co-chaired the two-day 15th India-Iran Joint Commission meeting, which took place after more than three years. It was last held in New Delhi in 2005.

Ahead of his departure to Tehran, Mukherjee in an exclusive interview with Iran's official news agency IRNA, had backed Iran's right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Even though he added a caveat, that it should be consistent with international obligations and commitments, the Minister was quite candid in his message: that Tehran’s special relations with New Delhi will endure irrespective of the latter’s growing strategic ties with Washington. These remarks appear to contradict earlier remarks made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but it is not easy to discern the motive of Mukherjee’s visit at this juncture.

Despite the encouraging rhetoric from both the sides, emphasizing the ‘civilizational and the cultural ties’ between the two countries, India-Iran bilateral relationship is visibly  strained in an era of increasing engagement between India and the US, two countries that were termed some time ago as “estranged democracies”. In the past few years, New Delhi and Washington have tried to redefine their relationship entirely, inciting concerns both domestically and internationally. India voted against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Keeping recent developments in mind, the remarks by Mukherjee seems all the more geared toward pacifying Iran in the face of skyrocketing oil prices and the increasing demand of energy in a growing economy like India.

Thus, when quizzed on the context of Manmohan Singh’s recent remarks on Iran’s Nuclear Program, Mukherjee played safe and reiterated that India always wanted that the issue “must be resolved through dialogue and understanding and that confrontation must be avoided… We believe that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) must play a central role in resolving all the outstanding issues.”

Trying to allay concerns in Iran, regarding the impact of the recently-inked Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, Mukherjee hinted on the regularity of high-level visits and reminded that it was his third visit in about 20 months. Not meaning to undermine the importance of the pipeline issue, the Minister, made it clear that India has a broad relationship with Iran and no single issue like the pipeline project would hamper it. The proposed $7.4 billion project has been stalled due to differences over pricing and security of the pipeline, which is to pass through the militancy-prone region of Balochistan in Pakistan. The project involves exporting Iranian gas via Pakistan to India.

Noting that India and Iran were developing countries with “obvious synergies” Mukherjee was of the view that the energy sector was at the focus of the bilateral economic ties with Tehran. “Iran is energy-rich country, whereas India is energy-deficient economy”, he reflected on the symbiotic nature of the ties. While in Teheran, he tired to press on the Iranians the prospect of India being a major consumer of the surplus Iranian energy. Iran has the second largest oil and natural gas reserves in the world, and the pace of India’s economy would demand an exploitation of all sources of energy. Clearly, the visit assumes importance in this context because as Mukherjee himself acknowledged, the nuclear deal is just one of the important sources of energy but not the only one. And, the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline forms an important part of the Indian endeavor, even though critical issues remain to be sorted out. He reiterated that the  civil nuclear deal was not at the cost of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, at a joint press conference with Iranian Economic Minister Shamseddin Hossein.

Talks on the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) deal concluded in 2005, for supply of five million MTPA of gas to India, also formed an important part of the visit. Tehran had refused to implement the agreement, seeking revision of its price, which was unacceptable to New Delhi.  So, India has asked for an implementation from the Iranian side for this deal to be effective. Asked about the fate of this deal, Hossein said there were several financial and technical issues that needed to be considered.

Insofar, as political relationship between the two countries is concerned, Mukherjee expressed positive indications about expanding these following his meeting with the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other senior leaders.

The two sides also signed an External Treaty and a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, four Memoranda of Understanding, including a working plan on agriculture and sister port arrangement between the Shahid Rashid Port in Iran and Jawaharlal Nehru Port trust near Mumbai. The two sides finalized the text of the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) which Mr. Mukherjee hoped would be signed soon. The Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) and a pact on civil aviation were also initialed. These would be signed after the Union Cabinet approved them. The two countries decided to set up a trilateral mechanism at the Petroleum Ministers’ level to resolve the differences over various aspect of the IPI gas pipeline project, including pricing. A meeting of the Petroleum Ministers of both the countries will be called soon to discuss the issue.

It is not very hard to discern that the External Affairs Minister was continuously trying to re-emphasize the relevance of ‘non-alignment’ in India’s foreign policy. At a seminar entitled 'India and Iran: Ancient Civilizations and Modern Nations' in Tehran, he underlined India’s independent foreign policy, even as he stressed on the need for New Delhi and Tehran to look 'afresh' at their relations in the light of the rise of Asia and changing global realities. Clearly concerned with Iran's worries about India's ties with the US, he expressed the India’s multipolar instincts saying that India is strengthening her relationships with all the major powers – US, Russia, EU, China and Japan as well as with emerging economies in Asia, Latin America and Africa. The Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki agreed with Mukherjee about the need to modernize ties between the two countries. He stressed that Tehran and New Delhi should also work out regional cooperation which secures the real interest of both nations, while condemning “mischief of foreign powers aimed” at sowing discord between the two countries.

Addressing a meeting of the India-Iran Joint Business Council in Tehran, Mukherjee reflected on the global financial crisis, and said that the World Bank and IMF have lost their relevance in contemporary situation and that they should take into account the changing world economic order. This was yet another attempt on the part of India’s External Affairs Minister, while in West Asia, to distance India from the American economic structure and present it as favoring a different and independent course of governing the global economy. ---INFA

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)