Manmohan Singh: Tough time

Washington, June 12: India has received a severe setback to its policy on Iran, which raises awkward questions about New Delhi’s standing within the 116-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and threatens to further complicate relations between the government and Left parties.

The setback comes at a delicate juncture for India.

The board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began a four-day meeting in Vienna today, the focus of which is on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Second, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is planning to travel to Cuba in September for a NAM summit, which is expected to overwhelmingly endorse Tehran’s stand on its nuclear dispute with western countries.

So far, South Block has managed to cover up the rejection of its tight rope-walking on Iran at a meeting of NAM foreign ministers in Malaysia a fortnight ago by pretending that its stand in favour of a negotiated settlement of Tehran’s nuclear crisis won the day.

The minister of state for external affairs, Anand Sharma, arrived in Putrajaya, Malaysia, for the foreign minister’s meeting with a secret brief from New Delhi ? at Washington’s request ? to bring NAM’s stand on Iran closer to that of the European countries negotiating with Tehran.

But Sharma found to his chagrin that under Malaysia’s chairmanship, NAM had become a mirror image of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), especially on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Although most OIC states pay lip service to Washing- ton’s concerns about Tehran’s alleged nuclear ambitions, they spiritually and emotionally back Iran’s nuclear policies.

According to several diplomats from Islamic countries who attended the Putrajaya meeting, the OIC states in NAM were joined by the radicals, led by Cuba, which will assume the movement’s chair after the Havana summit on September 15 to 16.

Sensing the weight of numbers, Sharma beat a hasty retreat from his brief.

His lengthy intervention in the general debate at the meeting did not make even a passing reference to Iran although Tehran’s nuclear ambitions were the hottest and most publicised issue in Putrajaya.

In fact, given the background of his secret brief, portions of Sharma’s intervention sounded like a confession.

“By definition, to be non-aligned meant to be radical,” he said. “Today when East-West conflict gives place sometimes to East-West collusion, it is both more difficult but also more important to be united in order to be both non-conformist and independent.”

Such a tactical evasion did not, however, help India, which could not, of course, go along with the OIC and the radicals. Nor could India join Singapore and Jamaica, which were leading the anti-Tehran charge within NAM. Such open identification with a policy against Iran would have created political problems back in New Delhi.

In the end, Sharma was neither here nor there and quietly went along with the consensus, which did not include any criticism of Iran’s nuclear activities and warned against any attack on peaceful nuclear facilities.

Meanwhile, opening today’s meeting of the IAEA, its director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said “the agency has not made much progress in resolving outstanding verification issues.”

He added that he “would continue to urge Iran to provide the co-operation needed to resolve these issues.”

At the same time, there is concern in some circles here that US opposition to the Iran-India pipeline has been counter-productive.

There is speculation that Russia and Iran are negotiating a deal under which Tehran will send its gas to Russia, which, in turn, will pipe it through Central Asia into international markets, leaving India a loser for the mirage of an elusive strategic partnership with the US.