Dial CIS for merger It was an unusual dinner. Not only because of the choice of words that the visiting defence minister of a central Asian country was using in showering encomiums on India. The Indian defence minister and host for the evening, George Fernandes, was only halfway through his toast when his ebullient central Asian counterpart took out the gifts which his delegation had brought along for customary exchange with the hosts. The visiting minister?s excitement was partly explained when the gifts he brought for Fernandes were opened and the chief guest explained the rationale behind their choice. He took out a whip, a very special gift in central Asia where the horse is a proud symbol of power and conquest through history. Handing over the whip to Fernandes, the visiting minister said: ?India is a great power and it will be a global power. This whip is for India to use.? The dinner, although unusual, was by no means a oneoff event in India?s ties with central Asia as the Bharatiya Janata Party led government launches an ambitious initiative to reengage a region which is India?s extended neighbourhood. If February was the month of the ?bus diplomacy? of the prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, March could well be described as the month of the central Asian initiative of the external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh, as he steers South Block towards refocussing its attention on one of the most crucial areas for Indian foreign policy. Later this week, Kazakhstan will hold an investment conference in New Delhi, for which its deputy prime minister, Z. Karibzhnov, is flying down to New Delhi. Kazakhstan, rich in oil, coal, iron, manganese, chrome and copper, also has a giant steel and mining industry built during the Soviet era. In central Asia, it is a magnet for international investment. In order to tap its potential for attracting global investment, Kazakhstan has been holding road shows in the major financial capitals of the world. But these road shows have so far bypassed India despite New Delhi?s search for a foothold in central Asia ever since the region?s republics broke away from the Soviet Union. The investment conference opening in New Delhi on Friday will be the first attempt by any central Asian republic to focus on developing a relationship with this country which is built around Indian private sector investment. The conference in New Delhi will be followed at the end of this month by a meeting of the Indo-Kazakh joint commission to be held in Almaty. Both these events represent a recognition by Kazakhstan that India is important in its regional and international strategy. For more than seven years since Kazakhstan became independent, India has been trying to engage Almaty in a bilateral relationship which is beneficial for both sides. But the attempt has often been half-hearted and lacked focus. It is a hangover from the days of Soviet style diplomacy that in the case of all the new republics in the Commonwealth of Independent States, the joint commissions continue to be the engine for bilateral engagement. The Indo-Kazakh joint commission has, however, not met since 1997. The decision to reconvene its meeting this month is not only timely, but also a necessary element in the BJP led government?s effort to prioritize its dealings with central Asia. To understand its importance, it is essential to examine the decision in the overall context of India?s relations with central Asia. As in the case of Kazakhstan, India?s joint commission with Uzbekistan held its last meeting in March 1996. When South Block took the initiative to convene its meeting three weeks ago in New Delhi, the BJP led government was sending a signal that the worst of the post-Pokhran fallout was over and that India was now free to take new foreign policy initiatives. In the central Asian context, such a message could not have been more timely. Less than a month ago, Uzbekistan?s president, Islam Karimov, and the whole of the country?s cabinet had a narrow escape from a series of car bombs right at the centre of Tashkent, Uzbekistan?s capital. The car bombs which killed 15 persons and injured 150 others were timed to explode near the main government building in Mustaqalik Maidan (Independence Square) where a meeting of the cabinet was to have been presided over by Karimov. The country?s leadership escaped death only because the meeting was cancelled at the last minute. Indians have a sense of deja vu about what happened in Tashkent on February 16. Six years ago, almost to the day, Mumbai had similarly been held to ransom by the very same elements who were now targeting Tashkent. Mumbai survived the Pakistan sponsored fundamentalist onslaught on it, and in subsequent years managed to subdue the threat to the city from religious extremists. But the events in Tashkent last month are a reminder that the evil forces which sought to destroy Mumbai are down, but not out: they have, in fact, managed to spread their tentacles farther and penetrated even societies which were once considered impregnable for religious fundamentalists. Karimov immediately named Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya as the fountainhead of the fundamentalist spillover into Uzbekistan. New Delhi?s efforts to build new bridges with Tashkent must be seen in the context of the common fundamentalist threat which both India and Uzbekistan are faced with. Indeed, the rationale for such broad-based cooperation with India against religious extremism extends to all of central Asia. The visit to India last month ? brief though it was ? of Emomali Rakhmonov, the president of Tajikistan, must be seen against the imperative for all central Asian states to come together and pool their resources against the rise of militant Islam. Within the CIS, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are already part of a troika whose objective is to work together against the common threat from religious extremism. For men like Osama bin Laden, their next target, after having achieved the virtual destruction of Afghanistan, is neighbouring Tajikistan. Despite a 1997 accord on peace which brought back dissidents from neighbouring Afghanistan, Rakhmonov is feeling the heat of the taliban?s ascendancy across his border. Kyrgyzstan has also acknowledged that it faces a similar threat: corroborating this have been the recent arrests of some extremist elements in southern Kyrgyzstan. But for any such coalition against militant Islam to be effective, it is necessary for India to play its role in the broader fight in central Asia against fundamentalism. Fortunately, this is what the BJP led government?s latest central Asian initiative is all about. It is to the credit of this government, however, that this political initiative is being complemented by efforts to broadbase ties with central Asia and give economics its due place. This makes eminent sense because of the region?s enormous wealth of natural resources: after all, the struggle for central Asia is more about exploiting these resources than about ideology or politics.