POLITICS-INDIA: New Gov’t Has Mixed Feelings on Ties with U.S.

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, May 26 2004 (IPS) - India’s newly installed Congress-led coalition government may be communist-supported, but is nevertheless keen on maintaining the good relations with Washington built up by the ousted right-wing government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

”We will continue to engage our American friends in a constructive manner à.we would like to strengthen, deepen and widen Indo-U.S. relations,” Foreign Minister and senior Congress party leader K Natwar Singh told journalists on Wednesday.

The Congress party, which ruled India for most of the years following independence in 1947, has had a history of poor relations with the United States and actually drew up a military pact with the former Soviet Union during the Cold War years.

After the BJP came to power in 1998, India’s foreign policy underwent a sea change. In response to the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who left office last week, offered logistical support for the ‘war against terror’ in Afghanistan.

But when the U.S. government extended that war to Iraq, even the BJP, which never had a majority of its own, was compelled by the Congress-led opposition in Parliament to pass a resolution condemning it.

The Congress party, as also the Left Front and other smaller parties, have firmly opposed any move to send Indian troops to Iraq in spite of repeated requests from Washington.

Now with the Congress party leading the left-of-centre United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government, it is difficult to see India participating in any military campaign in Iraq except under the clear mandate of the United Nations.

Salman Haidar, a former foreign secretary who worked closely with Congress’ Natwar Singh, said he expects the UPA government to have difficulty finding common ground with the U.S. government and its western partners at multilateral fora including the World Trade Organisation.

But Haidar said there was every indication that Natwar Singh, a seasoned career diplomat before he took to politics, would push a ”pragmatic approach” that would be forward-looking while balancing the ideological interests of the Congress party’s leftist friends.

Already, senior leaders such as Harkrishan Singh Surjeet have called for sweeping changes to the BJP’s openly pro-Washington and even pro-Israeli policies.

”It is shameful that the BJP government has chosen to remain mum on the atrocities being committed and even threats to eliminate Yasser Arafat, a long-time friend of India,” Surjeet said.

In fact, one ticklish issue that the new government would soon find itself having to deal with is the friendship forged with Israel by the BJP, a step that reversed traditional Congress party support for the Palestinian cause.

The BJP saw in Israel an ally ”with fundamental similarities,” Brajesh Mishra, national security advisor in the BJP government, said while addressing the American Jewish Congress in May last year.

Mishra’s idea that ”strong U.S.-India and India-Israel relations” were possessed with a ”natural logic” was cheered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who visited India in September 2003 to promote the triangular relationship.

Following Sharon’s visit, the two countries deepened defence cooperation. With the blessings of Washington, India inked several deals to buy Israeli military hardware, including such sensitive items as Green Pine long-range radar systems and Phalcon airborne early warning (AEW) or eye-in-the-sky surveillance systems.

Warnings by peace activists and Congress party leaders against too close an alignment with Israel were dismissed by BJP supporters and right-wingers as coming from ”the fossilised remains of the Nehruvian school of foreign policy and non-alignment”.

But leading foreign policy analysts such as G Parthasarathy, who has also served a term as foreign secretary, say that while the BJP can be criticised for bending over backwards to please Washington, some of its policies have yielded positive results for India.

For example, Parthasarathy said, U.S. intervention in Afghanistan has resulted in the ouster of the Taliban regime, which was openly hostile to India and sheltered militant groups that were operating in Kashmir, also claimed by neighbour and rival Pakistan.