The season’s first major snowfall wrapped Moscow in pristine white on Monday as prime minister Manmohan Singh and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev sat down in the Kremlin with a sense of purpose that has been missing from the historic Indo-Russian relationship for the past few years, and emerged with a set of significant bilateral deals. At least one of them, the ‘agreement on cooperation in the use of atomic energy for development purpose’, is being termed ‘path-breaking’ by many.
The effort clearly was to bring back the old vibrancy of Indo-Russian ties. And the outcome was visible, as the two sides made giant strides in several areas of cooperation, while promising to overhaul insipid trade ties.
White Christmas celebrations are just beginning in the Russian capital, and there couldn’t have been a better symbolism of what the two countries achieved on Monday. After several dull years, frosty interactions and many disputes, the countries gave out clear signals of their intention to take multifaceted bilateral ties back to their rightful place.
The countries signed a historic deal for cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy, signed a framework for decade-long military and technology cooperation, inked a protocol to jointly develop a multirole transport aircraft (MTA), and set a target for fourfold increase in bilateral trade by 2015. Also, Russia agreed to streamline after-sale support of its military systems in India. The countries are also close to finalising a new price for the refit of the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov. Haggling over the matter had come to symbolise the strains in Indo-Russian relations in recent times.
The prime minister said visits such as the present one are the “defining characteristic of our relations, and reflect the strong political commitment on both sides to continue to strengthen our strategic partnership”. He said Russia was a “major global power” and “India accords the highest priority to its relations with Russia. This is a relationship that stands on its own footing and is not influenced by our relations with any other country”.
Medvedev said the meeting was not just an “exchange of impression but (an) intensive full-scale” one that achieved several results.
Over the past few years, growing Indo-US relations and other matters had become issues of concern in Moscow, as it steadily lost its Indian military market share. The frosty relation was best symbolised by the frisking of the then foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee at the airport in Moscow during the UPA government’s first tenure.
Russia cannot find a bigger market for its nuclear industry, military-ware and other products. India cannot hope to get such concessions and capabilities from anywhere else, including the US. For example, the nuclear deal with Russia signed on Monday assures that Moscow would complete ongoing reactors and provide lifelong fuel supply even if the bilateral deal is called off and implicitly grants India ENR (enrichment and reprocessing) rights.
Singh and Medvedev said they would be putting extra stress on improving bilateral trade ties. They announced a $100-million credit line and identified areas such as nuclear energy, pharmaceuticals, diamonds, IT and hydrocarbons as areas where there is scope for expansion. Singh said the countries have decided to set an annual bilateral trade target of $20 billion by 2015. In the first nine months of this year, Indo-Russian trade was worth just $5 billion.
The warmth in ties was visible throughout the press interaction of the two leaders, as they agreed on a host of issues, ranging from Afghanistan to Pakistan and terrorism to the economy, and working for a successful outcome of the climate meet at Copenhagen.
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