Oh, For a Foreign Trip!

To Russia, In Expectation

Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal is accompanying Sinha to the WSSD, from where he proceeds to Moscow for bilateral consultations before the onset of the UN General Assembly deliberations. Increasingly, it seems, that with Washington refusing to point an accusing finger at Pakistan on terrorism/violence/potential intimidation in the forthcoming Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections, New Delhi’s sense of disappointment with the West could persuade it to look back with warmth to older relationships, such as Russia. Moscow continues to build the Kudankulam peaceful nuclear reactors under IAEA safeguards and even Washington has noted that Russia has recently turned down a request to scrap its plans to build a reactor for Iran. Certainly, the $1 billion price tag on the Iranian reactor has much to do with Moscow’s refusal—Russia’s economy is said to have shrunk to a size smaller than Netherlands—but then, nearly a year after September 11, the global fight against terror is neither global, nor unequivocal.

But back to India and Russia. With President Vladimir Putin’s visit all set for December, deliberations to buy the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov are said to have reached their final phase. Naval chief Madhvendra Singh has just returned from a tour of the sites in Russia, and New Delhi will now make a decision about the price and the strategic value it commands. About time too, since negotiations have been going on for only seven years now.

Track-II Back on Track

Just when former Foreign Secretary Salman Haidar was about to fall into a hole on his India-Pakistan Track II front—his second seminar on Kashmir fell apart, with New Delhi refusing to give visas to Pakistani participants—he seems to have rescued himself. With India persisting with its approach of ‘‘no dialogue with all Pakistanis until cross-border terrorism ends,’’ Haidar has resumed his Ford Foundation-funded series with Indians only as participants. Kashmiris from Kashmir and elsewhere and other strategic analysts are on the invitation list for the third session, to be hosted, as always, in Chandigarh.

MEA Should Spell CII

If only the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) could play a more active role in the MEA! The CII’s very-quiet and very behind-the-scenes diplomacy in the aftermath of the Pokharan tests between India and the US was quite the stuff of a racy novel. Now this chamber of commerce has gone one better. Last week, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, some 40-odd companies from the CII show-cased competitive Indian technology at prices one-fourth that in the West. This week that exhibition moves on to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Are you seeing a message in India’s Central Asian bottle? Next month, nearly 200 companies are coming together to put up a ‘‘Made-in-India’’ show in Kabul. With the Pakistan route to Afghanistan a no-no, Indian businessmen are realising that they must find alternative, creative outlets to their comfortable existence at home.