Betraying an old friend at IAEA?

In an ultra right political milieu since the BJP-led coalition seized power in New Delhi, India, for the first time, started flirting with the United States. But in spite of the personal predilection of Jaswant Singh, the then external affairs minister of India -- thought to be responsible for Indo-US courtship -- after having to his credit ten rounds of talks with Strobe Talbolt during Clinton era, it was not easy to break clean from the past in India's external policy. While the domestic policy evokes controversies and divisions the foreign relations remained by and large bipartisan based truly on national consensus and guided strictly by the country's principled stand. That tradition set by the country's founding fathers could seldom be dented by any quarter.

Yet overwhelmed by Bill Clinton's high profile India-visit during the final year of his presidency, a few flattering references of the US to India as its 'strategic partner,' later a phone call from Ms Condoleezza Rice, then President Bush's National Security Adviser and finally the US President's NMD (National Missile Defence) emissary Richard Armitage, India seemed to have capitulated by endorsing Bush's highly controversial NMD which entailed a renewed international arms race, a new wave of cold war, the weaponisation of outer space as well as the scrapping of 1972 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty each one of which was at one time opposed by India and still disputed even by the US' traditional allies.

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The aberrations caused by the RSS zealots who owed no moral obligation to preserve India's traditional foreign policy posture perhaps awaited redress with a change of guard in New Delhi. But belying such expectation the Congress-led UPA government of Dr Manmohan Singh has now gone whole hog to embrace the Uncle Sam by entering into a strategic partnership with Washington and turning India to be its comprador ally for the region to preserve and promote the strategic interests of the world's Sole superpower. By now India's baptism to realpolitik -- an eupheism for pragmatism -- was complete.

The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Authority's) recent vote in Vienna where New Delhi was able to shrug off an old world morality so acutely etched in certain parts of the Congress Party and its major Left allies and make the grand leap towards pragmatism is a pointer. As the 35-member governing board of the IAEA in Vienna voted to censure Iran for 'non-compliance' with IAEA safeguards on nuclear installations India also cast its ballot in favour of the US-backed European Union-3 resolution effectively opening up the way for taking Iranian case for possible sanction to the UN Security Council -- although India had been in the forefront of decrying the US attempts for such an action and there was in existence a formal nuclear cooperation agreement between India and Iran. When External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh visited Tehran in early September -- ten days before the Indian prime minister met Bush in New York -- he reaffirmed Iran's right to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Earlier as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh bluntly told a New York audience that Iran, as a signatory to Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty must abide by its international commitments and obligations the whole world sat up in astonishment. "We do not want another nuclear state in neighbourhood" Manmohan Singh said however adding that India still preferred that diplomacy be given another chance to succeed. But there was hardly any difference in rhetoric. The Indian prime minister was saying much the same thing as George Bush & Co that Iran must abandon its secret desire to go nuclear and turn back from the red line it had crossed a few weeks before. For a country of India's moral stature which always stood by its Non-Aligned Third World friends for decades this somersault at Vienna was nothing short of ideological revisionism. Although India in self-defence argued that it helped broker a postponed Iran referral to the Security Council, Iran was not convinced and accused New Delhi of betraying an old friendship.

But New Delhi couldn't care less. In its reckoning it was none other than the US which only this July had gone out of her way to recast the international nuclear order by implicitly accepting India as the sixth nuclear power. So, India consciously abandoned a centuries old friendship with one of the oldest civilizations of the world. An India vote at IAEA in favour of Europe-America would give the US Administration much needed boost to push through the legislation currently being debated with regard to new dimensions of Indo-US relations.

Even as India more or less decided to play along with the US on Iraq nuclear issue it also seemed to have decided in principle to go ahead with the IPI gas pipeline of which India would be the biggest beneficiary. But the US opposed the project from its very inception. So few believe that it is anymore on track. But the world's sole superpower cannot be oblivious of the way India can be compensated for the loss. The multinational company Ernst and Young has already been asked to prepare a financial feasibility report for energy supply to India. In the meantime a 25-year long deal to import liquidified natural gas from 2009 was approved by Indian government.

In Nehruvian tradition India always took care of its relationship with the Middle East's Arab/Islamic world. At times she seemed even ahead of Pakistan in promoting solidarity with this geo-strategic hub. The same sentiment lacked in its latest deal meted out to Iran. At IAEA as India was playing realpolitik the moral high ground was held by Hugh Chavez's tiny Venezuela which was only honourable exception to say an emphatic 'no' to the resolution.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.