Pipeline not pipe dream

BJP prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had carved himself a reputation last April by unhinging the Indo-Pakistan dialogue from the mutual a...

BJP prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had carved himself a reputation last April by unhinging the Indo-Pakistan dialogue from the mutual acrimony and recrimination that has often been the prerogative of the pedagogue. The Congress government, aware that the 8216;8216;lets give peace a chance8217;8217; slogan is an instant hit has decided to push the envelope with Islamabad. That8217;s the basis of New Delhi8217;s decision to place, for the first time ever on the bilateral agenda, the matter of the gas pipeline from Iran to India, overland via Pakistan.

The gas pipeline idea, unsurprisingly also called the 8216;8216;peace pipeline8217;8217;, has been around ever since former foreign minister Jaswant Singh travelled to Iran in 2000. Singh was himself in favour, but he let himself be persuaded by his conservative bureaucracy. So New Delhi insisted that Pakistan must first end cross-border terrorism before it could consider the idea. When Yashwant Sinha took over, a ship conducting a deep sea feasibility survey sank, showing how difficult it would be to lay a pipeline 3,000 m below the sea. But the bureaucracy held firm. A pipeline transiting Pakistan could never be put on the agenda.

Things seem different now. External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh and Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, both former IFS officers and Pakistan hands to boot, understand the power of officialdom. They were there once too. And so they decided at the recent foreign ministerial talks to put the pipeline security onus on Pakistan itself. The first talks between Aiyar and his Pakistani counterpart on this issue are likely soon.

See-saw diplomacy

A handful of people were witness at the Oberoi Hotel one evening this week to a slice of history-in-the-making. Perhaps it was just another variant of the see-saw negotiations between India and Pakistan. Call it what you will. The interesting thing was that this was between the leaderships of India8212;Foreign Ministers Natwar Singh and Khurshid Kasuri and National Security Adviser J N Dixit8212;and their bureaucrats, Joint Secretary Arun Singh, Director-General on the India desk in Islamabad Jalil Jilani and Pakistan High Commissioner Aziz Khan.

The piece of negotiating paper went back and forth. Kasuri cut out a line and wrote something on it. The Indian side looked at it, hard. At last you could hear Singh and Dixit saying that was fine. Did the bureaucrats look pleased as well? It was difficult to say. But the whole scene reminded some of the July 2001 Agra summit, when negotiating papers had also gone back and forth. The deed had been almost done, until Vajpayee saw a TV recording of the infamous breakfast between Pervez Musharraf and several editors. From then on, the summit was doomed to failure.

Nepal as bridge to China

Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is in town for talks with the Indian leadership, and one important issue on the agenda is greater access for both Nepali and Indian goods through each other8217;s countries. As New Delhi and Kathmandu build trust, trade and transit rights comprise a crucial building block. Just as Pakistan could become a 8216;8216;bridgehead8217;8217; for trade from Central/West Asia to South Asia, Nepal has the potential of similarly bridging the Indian subcontinent and the Chinese landmass up north.

And so in the inter-government committee in December when Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran was ambassador to Kathmandu, New Delhi proposed that Nepal give transit rights for Indian goods going to Tibet and China8217;s other western frontier provinces. Kathmandu hasn8217;t said anything yet. Meanwhile, it has asked for additional access through the Jawaharlal Nehru port in Mumbai, beyond Kolkata. The Indian Government seems ready and willing in principle.

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There will be one concrete manifestation of cooperation though on the Deuba visit: An MoU between Indian Oil and Nepal Oil to build a pipeline so as to secure supplies and not let them be subject to whims of Maoist blockades.