The Hindu : Front Page : Manmohan, Zardari set to break the ice

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Tuesday, Jun 16, 2009
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Manmohan, Zardari set to break the ice

Siddharth Varadarajan

India upbeat on SCO, BRIC summits

Yekaterinburg: With the world‘s eyes riveted on this Russian city on the Asian side of the Urals where the potentially system-shaping international interactions of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) quartet get under way on June 16, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived on Monday with an additional target in his sight: his first encounter with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari since last November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai put bilateral relations into cold storage.

Though the format of the half-hour meeting scheduled between Dr. Singh and Mr. Zardari for Tuesday afternoon has not yet been finalised, senior officials told The Hindu they hoped it would be a one-on-one affair. “That way, there can be the freest possible exchange of views,” an Indian official said. The meeting between the two leaders, which was requested by the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi last week, did not mean India no longer stood by its expectation that Pakistan must act against terrorism emanating from its soil.

“We will express our expectations. This is not a question of presenting a list of demands … But we are clear that terrorists are not going to be given a veto” over the bilateral relationship, a senior official said.

The Prime Minister will hold separate bilaterals with his Chinese, Kazakh and Russian counterparts. Yekaterinburg will also mark the international re-entry of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fresh from an election victory the West regards as tainted. Fittingly, a bilateral with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has already been arranged, and the Indians do not rule out a “pull aside” with him.

Indian officials refused to speculate about what might emerge from the Manmohan-Zardari meeting. “We are against setting markers because all we do is feed the enemies of peace, who then know what they have to do to stop the process,” said an official. At the same time, officials cautioned against the Yekaterinburg encounter being elevated to the status of a “structured dialogue.” While expressing their unhappiness over Islamabad’s “legalistic” handling of the case of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed, freed from house arrest by a Lahore court earlier this month, they conceded that the Pakistani Army offensive against the Taliban in Swat was a “major, major battle.”

India and Pakistan became observers of the SCO in 2005 but Delhi has so far refrained from attending its summits at the highest level, preferring to deploy ordinary ministers instead of the Prime Minister. This year, that pattern is being broken. The Indian side says this is because the Russian hosts changed the format of the interaction, granting observers a voice in the SCO’s restricted sessions. But officials also concede that India today has a greater appetite for interacting with a grouping that is seen as a reflection of big power rivalry in the Asian landmass.

Stakes up

What has changed is the geopolitical terrain following the victory of President Barack Obama in the United States, as well as the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, both of which have increased India’s stakes in the SCO game. India, they said, was not averse to even joint SCO-level military exercises, especially with an anti-terror focus, once the grouping came up with a suitable format.

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