POLITICS-INDIA: New Gov’t Bares Tougher Foreign Policy Approach

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jun 1 2004 (IPS) - The return to power of India’s Congress party – riding on support from communist parties with whom it shares ideologically similar views – naturally carries with it the diplomatic baggage of the Cold War era, a time India was firmly aligned with the former Soviet Union.

While India’s new foreign minister, Natwar Singh, a career diplomat-turned politician, is charting out a bold new course is said to be pragmatic, he will not be as overanxious to please Washington and its friends as the ousted, right-wing government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Through revelations made since assuming office last week, the formidably erudite Singh, who reviews books in his spare time, has made it clear that there will be no quick-fix solution to the half-century old Kashmir dispute.

He is prepared to play the waiting game a little longer, he says. ”You know we can sit it out. I don’t think the Pakistanis can sit it out indefinitely,” Singh said in an interview published in the Jun. 7 issue of the ‘Outlook’ weekly, laying out the essential difference between the Indian and Pakistani positions on the Kashmir real estate.

That statement and sharp responses from Pakistan occasioned a special clarification on Monday by India’s Foreign Secretary Shashank (one name), a top bureaucrat from the external affairs ministry who said that this country remains committed to the ”composite dialogue” initiated by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee while in Islamabad in January this year.

Fears that the brakes may now be applied, however gradually, to the new rapprochement have been allayed to some degree by telephone conversations between Pakistan Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on Saturday.

According to Natwar Singh, Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, who declined the premiership after leading her party to victory in the April and May polls but remains the country’s most powerful politician, plans to visit Pakistan in response to an invitation from Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf

Yet, Natwar Singh is more likely to follow the Congress party’s tough foreign policy, which has seen India militarily intervening in Pakistan’s civil war. This resulted in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

That war also produced the 1972 Simla Accord between India and Pakistan, under which the two countries agree to settle all outstanding disputes between them, including the Kashmir issue, bilaterally.

Natwar Singh has said repeatedly said that he considers the Simla Accord the ‘bedrock’ on which ties between the neighbours are constructed, causing much consternation in Islamabad.

The responses have been typical. On Saturday, Islamabad test-fired yet another one of its nuclear-capable missiles. The Pakistan-based militant group, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, claimed responsibility for the deadly May 23 ambush on a paramilitary convoy in Kashmir that left 30 people dead.

India’s tougher policy line proceeds from a view that the rapprochement achieved by Vajpayee was pushed by Washington and therefore needed reappraisal. ”Every pronouncement that came from the United States, even before anybody discussed it, we welcomed,” Natwar Singh said in criticism of the BJP policy.

While in the opposition, the Congress party and Natwar Singh thwarted plans by the pro-Washington BJP government to respond positively to U.S. requests for troops to be sent to Iraq.

Now firmly in office, the Congress party has let it be known that India would follow its old tack of being opposed to unilateral military action against any country and that any contribution to the effort to stabilise Iraq would have to come from a ”duly elected government in Iraq”.

The Congress party’s communist supporters favour a restructured foreign policy that makes India more closely aligned to China and Russia, but have so far not pushed it.

Perhaps in response to the Congress party’s clearly enunciated policy on Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told India’s privately-owned NDTV 24×7 news channel in an interview broadcast on Sunday that any further request to New Delhi for troops would indeed come from an Iraqi government.

For all its firmness, India under the Congress party-led coalition government is unlikely to upset the momentum built up by the BJP with Washington and its allies in the region such as Pakistan or Israel.

India ‘s new defence minister, Pranab Mukherjee, has announced that he would honour deals made by the BJP regime to buy military hardware from Israel, including such sensitive items as the Phalcon or airborne early warning (AEW) systems. Israel is currently India’s second biggest arms supplier after Russia.

The Congress party’s policy is more likely to be based on an attempt to deal with the U.S. government on an equal footing and reserve the right to criticise or oppose its policies or those of its allies.

Said Natwar Singh in his interview with ‘Outlook’: ”If you are really friendly with each other, as friends we have the right to tell them when we think they are doing wrong and vice versa.”