The Hindu : International : Putin to address irritants in ties

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 03, 2004

International

International

Putin to address irritants in ties

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, DEC. 2. During his visit to India on December 3-5, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, will seek to remove a number of irritants that threaten to sour the bilateral relations.

Kremlin is fed up with the endless reassurances from Indian officials to look into Moscow's grievances and is ready to take punitive steps, informed Russian sources said.

While India has pushed for greater access to Russian high-end defence and space technologies, it has been dragging its feet over signing an Intellectual Property Rights agreement that will protect sensitive defence and high-tech information. After waiting in vain for two years for a response to its defence secrecy draft, Russia's patience is about to snap. In case of further delays, it would shut the doors of its defence factories to Indian military and technicians, the sources said.

"Indian inspectors will no longer be allowed to freely roam the premises of top-secret Russian enterprises as they do today," the sources told The Hindu. "They will only be able to see contracted hardware after it rolls of production lines."

Pact in cold storage

Moscow is shocked to learn that while New Delhi has put a defence secrecy agreement with Russia in cold storage, it signed a similar accord with the United States recently. "We can't help feeling suspicious that India wants to take advantage of the situation to re-export Russian technologies," the sources said, adding that such suspicions may poison the bilateral ties and lead to a halt in further Russian defence technology transfers.

India's ambivalence in recognising Russia as a market economy is another major irritant. The sources said that Mr. Putin was "furious" when told in the run-up to the current visit that the problem was still pending two years after India formally accepted the market status of Russian economy in a joint statement signed during Mr. Putin's previous visit to India. Indian bureaucrats continue to treat Russia as a non-market economy when they decide whether to launch anti-dumping probes against Russian companies.

Purchase of spares

Russia has also hardened its tone on the issue of supply of spares and upgrade of the Russian-built weapon systems to India. Moscow is objecting to India's refusal to buy spares and seek upgrades from authentic Russian manufacturers only. Russian officials argue that they cannot guarantee the operation of Russia-built weapon systems if they use spares produced in third countries. Moreover, Russia finds it unfair that while India buys spares for Russian hardware from countries that also supply defence equipment to Pakistan, it insists that Moscow has no defence deals with Islamabad.

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