Medvedev Visit to India: A Significant Indo-Russian Summit

The recently concluded Indo-Russian summit at Delhi has in many ways opened a”new chapter” in our bilateral relations, as was stated by President Dmitry Medvedev during his first ever official visit to India on December 4-5, 2008. The summit reflected the time-tested and trustworthy friendship between the two countries, and further consolidated the growing strategic partnership between them in various areas. Altogether nine agreements on nuclear energy, defence, trade and economic relations, space, customs, tourism, financial intelligence, prevention of money laundering and legalisation of illicit revenues were signed during the summit. These would provide a strong impetus to our multifaceted cooperation in coming years.

The Declaration on Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership was signed during President Putin’s first visit to India in the year 2000 and received adequate content in the course of the subsequent seven summits attended by him. Putin had a fairly good deal of exposure of India and had, indeed, handled a lot of India-related business during the period when he was St. Petersburg’s Vice-Mayor looking after city’s foreign economic relations much before he took over the reins of the country. This cannot said of President Medvedev who visited India for the first time, and had never dealt with India in the past in contrast to his several visits to China in the last few years. This had raised certain skepticism in some circles about the efficacy of the current summit. However, the summit’s results proved that those doubts were misplaced, and demonstrated once again that there is a continuity in Indo-Russian relations and that change of leadership in either country does not affect this abiding, time-tested friendship. The Russian President’s visit to India assumed added significance as Dmitry Medvedev was the first world leader to come to our country after the ghastly terrorist attack on Mumbai. Obviously, terrorism was pushed to the top of the summit’s agenda as both countries are victims of this menace. Expressing strong solidarity with the Indian Government and people, Medvedev pledged to ”work with India on a whole spectrum of the problem and provide support in all directions”. The Joint Declaration, signed by President Medvedev and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, urges the international community to provide all assistance to bring to justice the organisers of the latest terrorist attack on India’s financial capital. The statement calls upon all countries to actively cooperate with India in its effort to find the perpetrators, masterminds, sponsors and everyone connected with the barbaric act.

One of the major achievements of the visit is no doubt the new thrust that Indo-Russian peaceful nuclear cooperation received as a result of the summit. Apart from signing an agreement for construction of four more reactors at the Kudankulam plant in Tamil Nadu where Russia is already in the final stages of building two reactors, both sides have expressed the desire to build additional reactors there as well as go for new nuclear plants elsewhere in the country, particularly in the east coast of India. A site would soon be identified on India’s east coast where Russia would build six reactors. Russia would not only build these reactors, it would provide guarantee for lifetime supply of nuclear fuel to them.

During Medvedev’s visit both countries signed a deal worth $ 700 million for Russian nuclear fuel supply to India. These deals, coming as they do in the aftermath of the much-hyped Indo-US nuclear agreement, signify that Delhi and Moscow are poised for some sort of strategic partnership in the sphere of nuclear cooperation.

Nuclear energy forms only part of the broader Indo-Russian energy cooperation, a traditional sector of our productive cooperation ever since India’s independence. India, which has invested $ 2.5 billion in the Sakhalin-1 upstream project, our largest investment abroad till date, is on the verge of purchasing the Imperial Energy company, engaged in oil exploration in Russia, for $ 2.58 billion, and the Russian side has given the green signal to the deal during the summit. India has been eyeing several oil and gasfields in Russia, including the huge Sakhalin-3 project, where it is bidding for a stake. All this suggests that Russia is destined to play a significant role in ensuring our energy security in the coming years.

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Defence cooperation constitutes a strong component of Indo-Russian strategic partnership. Medvedev repeatedly emphasised that our defence cooperation is slated to enter a qualitatively new phase beyond the presently predominant buyer-seller relationship. The new thrust in this sphere would be joint research, development and marketing, technology transfer etc., which would provide an unique character to our defence coope-ration in the days ahead. Missile development and aviation would be the priority areas for this new kind of cooperation. The supersonic BrahMos joint missile project would be followed by joint projects in developing and manufacturing multi-role transport aircraft, fifth generation aircraft and many others.

Both sides have been augmenting their defence ties under a long-term defence cooperation pro-gramme which expires in 2010 and have agreed to extend its tenure by another 10 years up to 2020. Under a deal clinched during the summit, Russia would supply 80 pieces of sophisticated M-17V-5 helicopters to India. Issues like leasing of nuclear submarines and the pricing of the aircraft career, Admiral Gorshkov, had come up for discussion during the summit. President Medvedev, down-playing the media criticism regarding the Russian demand for hiking the price for the aircraft career, Admiral Gorshkov, said that it is of a ‘technical’ nature and should not be blown out of proportion.

There has been a lot of genuine concern regarding the sagging Indo-Russian trade and economic relations, but one has to take note of the fact that the real strength of Indo-Russian cooperation lies in the sensitive high-tech areas, not accessible to other countries. Bilateral cooperation in space is one such area. Russia’s contribution to boosting India’s space research is commendable. While India’s first satellite Aryabhatta was launched from a Soviet cosmodrome with the help of a Soviet launcher, India’s first cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma had gone to the orbit in a Soviet spaceship and Russian cryogenic technology provided strong fillip to our missile development.

Both countries enjoy productive cooperation in the work over the Russian satellite navigation system GLONASS, joint research projects on the moon, joint development and launching of youth satellite ‘Youthsat’ etc. India’s premier space research centre, ISRO, and Russia’s leading organisation in this sphere, ROSKOSMOS, have signed an MoU during the latest summit for a manned space mission. The MoU envisages that an Indian cosmonaut would go on a Russia spaceship and Moscow would provide assistance for building a spaceship for India.

Science and technology has been another sensitive area of Indo-Russian cooperation for decades and there are more than 500 projects in which scientists of both countries are conducting joint research under the Integrated Long Term Programme (ILTP), the largest joint programme between any two countries in the world. Since the tenure of the programme is expiring in 2010, both countries expressed their intention to extend it by another ten years covering the period up to 2020. It has been decided to complete the work for setting up the Indo-Russian centre for technology transfer and expediting the industrial application of the results of joint research.

The leaders of India and Russia have been expressing serious concern over the sluggish growth of their trade and economic relations over the years. However, the leaders have finally expressed some satisfaction over the growth of their trade and economic relations as there seems to be a positive trend in this sphere ever since 2005. The Indo-Russian annual trade turnover, that hovered around $ 2-3 billion for years, reached $ 5 billion in 2007, causing satisfaction in both countries. It is expected that the volume of bilateral trade would reach $ 7 billion by the end of the current year, which triggers the hope that both countries would be able to achieve the target of $ 10 billion by the year 2010. Mutual investment has finally showed some positive trend. The Joint Chief Executive Officers Committee, co-chaired by Mukesh Ambani from the Indian side and Russian tycoon Evgeny Yavtushenkov, whose telecommunication company Systema plans to invest $ 5-7 billion in India, have signed an MoU, raising hopes that big private actors would now play a dynamic role in promoting economic and investment cooperation between the two countries.

Indo-Russian summits not only review the mutually beneficial bilateral cooperation but also provide an opportunity for exchange of views on important international and regional issues of mutual concern. In this regard the current summit is no exception. Defying US unilateralism, the recent Delhi summit once again confirmed both sides’ resolve to build a “multipolar world based on the principles of supremacy of law, sovereign equality, territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries”. India and Russia have re-emphasised the coordinating role of the UN in the international arena for ensuring peace and security, increasing its effectiveness and authority in world affairs. In this context, high-lighting the necessity for reforming the UN system, Russia has once again reiterated its support to India as a deserving and strong candidate for the post of a permanent member of the expanded UN Security Council.

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Delhi and Moscow have expressed satisfaction over the growing and target-oriented trilateral interaction between India, Russia and China, which creates the foundation for further development of cooperation between the three large countries of Asia. This trilateral cooperation is emerging as an important factor of multilateral diplomacy and makes a significant contribution to strengthening the emerging multipolarity and facilitates the formation of a collective leadership by the leading states of the world. It has been noted that successful interaction in the trilateral framework takes place not only between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the three countries, but also between the Ministries and Departments of Agriculture, Health, Disaster Warning aimed at liquidating the consequences of natural calamities and also between academic and business circles of the three countries. Gradually the trilateral summit is emerging as a feature of this trilateral interaction.

While trilateral Russia-India-China (RIC) cooperation seemed to be a pet project of President Putin, cooperation between Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) appears to be closer to the heart of the new Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev. During the Delhi summit India and Russia, while welcoming the expanding interaction in the BRIC format, expressed satisfaction over the first independent meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the four countries that took place in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg in May 2008 and the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the BRIC on the sidelines of 63rd session of the UN General Assembly in September 2008. The Delhi summit noted the significance of the first meeting of the Finance Ministers of the BRIC countries at Sao Paulo in November 2008 and also of the coordi-nated stand of the BRIC countries in the G-20 financial summit in Washington. India and Russia have expressed confidence that the next Foreign Minister-level meeting of the BRIC, planned to take place in India, and the BRIC summit, scheduled to be hosted by Russia in 2009, would impart a new dimension in the efforts to create multi-pronged mechanism for strength-ening cooperation between the most dynamically growing large economies of the world. Both countries, while welcoming the expansion of interaction between the G-8 countries and major developing economies, have also stressed the need for strengthening this cooperation for the sake of creating a more perfect mechanism for ensuring collective leadership in world affairs.

The strategic nature of this relationship is reflected in India’s support to Russia’s role in maintaining peace and security in the Caucasus. The Indo-Russian Joint Statement, issued at the end of the summit, while welcoming the Medvedev-Sorkozy plan to resolve the Caucasus problem, has highlighted Russia’s important role in ensuring peace and cooperation in the region. Thus India became virtually the first state outside the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation to support Moscow’s leading role in maintaining peace and security in the Caucasus. This is very important for Moscow, particularly in the context of Russia’s near-diplomatic isolation on the issue.

India and Russia did discuss all major regional issues of mutual concern in the course of the two-day summit. While discussing the situation in Afghanistan, where both countries have a lot at stake, Delhi and Moscow batted for a ‘democratic and pluralistic Afghanistan’ and welcomed that country’s admission into the SAARC as a full-fledged member. Both countries have expressed serious concern over the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan as a result of the coordi-nated rehabilitation of the Taliban forces, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, proliferation of trans-border terrorism, its links with international terrorism and international drug-mafia. India has welcomed the Russian initiative for organising an international conference on Afghanistan in the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organi-sation with the participation of all its members as well as observer nations.

Emphasising the role of the Shanghai Coopera-tion Organisation in Central Asia, Russia has extended its support to a more active role by India as an observer country in the Organisation. India, expressing its gratitude to Russia for its support, hopes for more active participation and greater contribution to the activities of the Organisation in future.

The Asia-Pacific Region is another area where both countries strive to have a greater presence and more decisive say. Both countries have expressed their intention to strengthen cooperation in this area through various organisations including ASEAN, ARF, Dialogue for Cooperation in Asia etc.

A noteworthy point in the Joint Declaration is the joint call by India and Russia to resolve the Iran issue through peaceful means, dialogue and negotiations. While appealing to all sides for demonstrating flexibility and restraint, India and Russia upheld Iran’s right to conduct research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in accordance with the terms of the NPT and its other international obligations.

The Middle East is a hot spot where Delhi and Moscow have a similar approach. They have called for an all-comprehensive, long-lasting and fair resolution of the Arab-Israel conflict on the basis of the UNSC Resolutions no 242, 338, 1397 and 1515 through peaceful negotiations that would lead to the creation of a sovereign, independent and united Palestine state.

There is no major international or regional question of mutual interest and concern on which India and Russia have differences, and this indeed underlines the strategic nature of the relationship. Perhaps India and Russia are the only two major powers in the world that do not have a clash of interests or suffer from differences of opinion on any major issue, and that makes them perfect and genuine strategic partners in the 21st century. The latest Indo-Russian summit in Delhi has once again unmistakably confirmed this truth.

Dr Arun Mohanty is an Associate Professor, Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.