US ties loom over India-Russia summit talks
(Reuters)8 November 2007
NEW DELHI - Indias growing ties with the United States and arms deals irritants in its decades-old defence relationship with Moscow are expected to dominate India-Russia summit talks next week.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to reassure Russia that New Delhis increasing closeness to Washington would not be at the cost of old ally Moscow, officials and analysts said.
The Nov. 11-12 summit in Moscow is an annual affair aimed at capitalising on the longstanding friendship between the two countries.
But Singhs talks with President Vladimir Putin this year are likely to come under the shadow of Russias growing tensions with the United States and Indian complaints that Russian arms deliveries were becoming more expensive and delayed.
Russia is feeling somewhat threatened by the US at the moment, said Anuradha Chenoy, head of Russian and Central Asian studies at New Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University.
And there is a fear that India could get more engaged with the US than its old partners would like.
While overall ties between Moscow and New Delhi remained on course, she said, Russia seemed worried at indications of a change in the direction of Indias foreign policy.
It would be an opportunity for the PM to reassure the Russians, Chenoy said. They would like India to continue to be on their side.
Although India called itself non-aligned during the Cold War, its sympathies were clearly with the then Soviet Union as the two countries forged strong political and defence links. Moscow supplied about 80 percent of New Delhis arms.
Those ties survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and were strengthened on the back of new partnerships in the energy and civilian nuclear sectors.
However, having embraced capitalist, free-market economic measures in the early 1990s, India began moving closer to the United States at the end of that decade and has since emerged as one of Washingtons new friends in Asia.
Defence delays
Today, the United States is Indias largest trading partner and the two countries are also pushing a strategic relationship extending across business, defence, energy and high technology areas, including a controversial civilian nuclear agreement.
Some analysts say that Washington is building India as a counterweight to China, and that New Delhi is playing along as this fits in with its ambitions to emerge as a global power.
While this has miffed China, the depth and strength of Indias relations with Russia provided enough elasticity to take some turbulence in its stride, said Nandan Unnikrishnan, director of Eurasian studies at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think-tank.
Of immediate concern, Indian defence officials said, were delays and cost escalations in defence deals between the two countries, whose trade otherwise stands around a meagre $2 billion annually.
New Delhi is annoyed that Russias main military shipyard is at least three years behind schedule on a $1.5-billion contract to modernise an aircraft carrier it bought in 2004 to strengthen its ageing navy.
Russian contractors were also pushing prices beyond agreed limits for long-term defence deals and this was expected to figure in Singhs talks in Moscow, the officials said.
Analyst Unnikrishnan, however, said such delays and differences over costs were not unique to Russia, and India faced such problems even with Israel, one of its new arms suppliers.
India is upset by the delays, added Chenoy. But defence officials say that they are still comfortable with Russian supplies. They may be late but they have never stopped supplies like some other countries.
Khaleej Times Online - US ties loom over India-Russia summit talks
