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India and Israel mind their own
business
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI - India's eagerness in cultivating a
new friendship with Israel will likely stop short of
making common cause over the revelation that rogue
scientists in neighboring Pakistan have been leaking
nuclear technology to some of Tel Aviv's worst enemies.
"The Israelis are naturally nervous that
countries in its immediate neighborhood have been
acquiring nuclear technology from Pakistan, but India
has to be more circumspect," P R Chari, director of the
prestigious Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies,
told Inter Press Service in an interview.
Speculation was rife in the capital that Israeli
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's visit to India - he was
due to leave on Thursday - aims to further growing
defense and technological cooperation between the two
countries in light of the new revelations from Islamabad
that nuclear technology had indeed been sold to Iran and
Libya. In brief remarks to the press, Shalom said that
nuclear proliferation from Pakistan had the potential of
"destabilizing the entire world" and that efforts had
now to be mounted to prevent extremist groups such as
the al-Qaeda from gaining access to "nuclear weapons".
Shalom called on democracies around the world to
"do everything we can in order to disarm all those
regimes that would like to bring destruction to their
enemies or their neighbors and we should do it against
states, countries, organizations".
But India's
Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, who was present at the
briefing that closely followed a meeting with Shalom,
chose to limit his observations to saying: "We have
shared our assessment of views on developments in the
Indian sub-continent as well as in West Asia."
Shalom called on Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee and Defense Minister George Fernandes on
Wednesday.
India and Pakistan have, since the
beginning of this year, been trying to put behind them
five years of difficult, roller-coaster relations that
followed tit-for-tat nuclear tests they carried out in
May 1998. The following year, India and Pakistan fought
a brief but bloody war at Kargil on the Line of Control
that divides the territory of Kashmir disputed by the
two neighbors. Most of 2001 was spent in a dangerous
military confrontation that saw the massing of close to
a million troops along their common border. It required
the intervention of Washington to prevent the Kargil war
and the military confrontation from escalating into a
possible nuclear exchange.
Along with
weaponizing India's nuclear technology, Vajpayee's
right-wing and ultra-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party
has also drastically changed India's long-held policy of
championing the Palestinian cause to seeking close
defense ties with Israel.
The Kargil war
triggered increasing involvement by Israel in India's
efforts to counter cross-border militancy in Kashmir as
well as negotiations for weapons and surveillance
systems - such as the Green Pine radar system, unmanned
aerial vehicles and the Arrow anti-ballistic missile
defense system.
Israel is now rated as the
biggest arms supplier to India after Russia. Shalom's
visit also closed a deal worth US$1.2 billion for the
sale of Phalcon early-warning radars to India, which is
seen to give New Delhi an edge in conventional weaponry
over regional rivals China and Pakistan.
In
September, Ariel Sharon became the first Israeli prime
minister to visit India at a time when there were still
doubts as to whether the Phalcon deal would go through
because of objections raised by Washington, which was
sensitive to the interests of its close military ally in
the region, Pakistan.
Sharon's visit with a
150-member delegation, including representatives from
its defense industry, drew protests from Islamabad,
which along with other Islamic countries does not
recognize the Jewish state.
Chari said that
while India was expanding its military cooperation with
Israel, it could not also afford to ignore the fact that
it was home to the world's second largest Muslim
population in the world and that it had close friends
among several Islamic countries and in the Arab world.
Vajpayee has, on several occasions, made it clear that
India would not abandon the Palestinian struggle to
regain their homeland.
Sinha, responding to
questions on the construction of a security barrier
within Palestinian territory, said India had voted in
the United Nations against the erection of the wall.
"The only thing I would like to tell you at this point
of time is that we continue to deal with this issue
according to our best judgement," Sinha said.
India, which has been home to small Jewish
settlements for many years, recognized Israel in 1950,
but refrained from establishing full diplomatic ties
until 1992 out of deference to the Palestinian cause and
its own anti-colonial stance.
Dependence on
petroleum imports from the Middle Eastern countries and
a large expatriate population in the Arab countries have
also been factors in India's recognition of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)as the
"legitimate representative of the Palestinian people".
In 1980, at the height of the Cold War, India,
which was allied to the former Soviet Union, granted
full diplomatic status to the PLO mission in Delhi. In
1982, the Israeli consulate in the western city of
Mumbai was closed down. But in a sign of the change in
political times, high on the agenda of Shalom's visit
was the reopening of Israel's consulate in Mumbai.
(Inter Press Service)
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