Iran shadow hangs over Singh’s visit to US

Washington, 7 March: Clouds are gathering over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Washington visit which may be anything but a celebration of India’s decade-long lovefest with America, with five weeks to go before he arrives here for a nuclear summit of over 40 heads of state and government.

By the time Singh arrives here, Iran’s nuclear programme is expected to dominate the US foreign policy agenda with the Obama administration pushing for crippling sanctions against the Islamic republic.

If Singh hopes to paper over the issue with his textbook statement about Iran’s nuclear programme – which he has used on almost every previous visit to the US – it will dent the support for India from constituencies here -- especially the powerful Jewish lobby -- which helped push the nuclear deal with the Bush administration.

If the Prime Minister goes along with the US line on Iran, which is facing waning support worldwide, India will be accused of being a US lackey.

Because of waning support for a US push for new sanctions against Tehran, the Obama administration will be looking ever more for Indian backing for a tough line against the Islamic republic. This is a dilemma the Prime Minister’s aides will have to resolve before he sets out for Washington.

The Iran issue will follow the Prime Minister like a shadow even after he leaves Washington for Brasilia for back-to-back summit meetings of Ibsa (India-Brazil-South Africa) and Bric (Brazil-Russia-India-China).

In a stunning display of diplomatic candour, which would have impressed Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Brazil last week defied American pressure to toe Washington’s line on Iran and showed the way for India which would once have done the same.

At a joint media conference with the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Brazil’s foreign minister Celso Amorim said in Brasilia that the situation which is now evolving on Iran was reminiscent “very much (of) what I heard back in 1998, 1999. I mean, smoke and mirrors” about Iraq when he was ambassador to Turkey.

“And what we saw, in fact, was the major charge against Iraq never did materialise…. The fact is that the destruction caused and the losses that the war (in Iraq) had incurred were huge.”

Amorim reminded Clinton that “Iran is a large, complex nation” and that “only with difficulty will Iran actually accept a situation where a decision is imposed on it top-down”.

Amorim’s clear differences with the US, which he is unafraid to verbalise, represents more than a public spat with Clinton. It represents a potential split within Bric and Ibsa which Singh will have to deal with at a time when the twin groupings of emerging economies have been hailed as embodying the international community’s post-American leadership.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov similarly said a few days ago that “no evidence exists that Iran has even decided to develop nuclear weapons” and that “we do not want observance of the non-proliferation regime to be used as a pretext to push for any other aims, including the strangulation of Iran”.

Both in Washington and Brasilia, Singh, who ordered India’s vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to refer Iran’s nuclear programme to the UN Security Council – so that the Indo-US nuclear deal may move forward – will have to go beyond the ritualistic moral enunciations on the need for Iran to pursue a peaceful nuclear programme.

Conscious of this diplomatic challenge, foreign secretary Nirupama Rao is arriving in Washington next weekend for talks with US officials in the run up to Singh’s visit. She recently went to both Iran and Myanmar, another country which is a thorn in US diplomacy.

On the face of it, Rao is visiting Washington for a meeting of the Indo-US High Technology Co-operation Group, but her real topics will be Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are clouding the bilateral Indo-US agenda.

Typical of how prickly sensitivities can be in both New Delhi and Washington was the unhappiness within the Indian leadership last week over comments by US President Barack Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, that Indians were not the target of a recent terrorist attack in Kabul.

Anxious to control the damage from Holbrooke’s comments, the US embassy in New Delhi quickly put out a statement, ostensibly from the special envoy that “I regret any misunderstanding caused by my comments.”

However, neither Holbrooke’s clarification nor his expression of regret has been made public in Washington, Islamabad or Kabul.

In fact, state department spokesman P.J. Crowley expressed surprise when he was told about the US embassy statement. “I mean, you are saying that Richard clarified what he said – I mean, he was here on Tuesday and you are saying he made some comments…. If he did issue any clarifications…. I have not seen a transcript yet.”

At the same time, Holbrooke’s remarks, which offended New Delhi, are prominently displayed on the website of the US embassy in Islamabad.

K.P Nayar, The Telegraph