India cuts to the chase with
Myanmar By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - There is international
pressure on India not to engage with the military
junta in Myanmar that severely cracked down on
pro-democracy protestors recently. But it seems
New Delhi has other ideas.
Betraying its
soft approach towards Myanmar, New Delhi has
advised the United Nations Security Council
against imposing sanctions, which should only be
used as a "last resort", on
Myanmar. Instead, India has
told the military regime to consider launching a
probe into the protests.
Reports have
emerged that Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee
conveyed India's concerns to his Myanmar
counterpart, U Nyan Win, during a meeting on the
sidelines of the UN General Assembly summit in New
York last week.
Mukherjee "suggested that
the [Myanmar] government could consider
undertaking an inquiry into the recent incidents
and the use of force", said a statement issued by
the foreign ministry. The minister also hoped the
"process of national reconciliation and political
reform, initiated by the government of Myanmar,
would be taken forward expeditiously".
Such open-ended diplomatic words can mean
only one thing: that India does not want to annoy
the military junta in any way, while maintaining
the decorum of international dismay on the matter.
"Feelers have been sent via diplomatic
sources in the West about India's position
regarding Myanmar. However, there has been no
advisory or official communication that India
should withdraw any business relations," a senior
foreign ministry official told Asia Times Online.
Mukherjee, during recent visits to
Thailand and South Korea, expanded a bit on New
Delhi's thinking. He said that India does not have
any problems dealing with military regimes as it
considers such issues "internal matters". New
Delhi has to deal with four military-ruled states
in its region - Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand and
Myanmar. This is apart from communist-ruled China,
Mukherjee said.
Publicly, Britain's Prime
Minister Gordon Brown leads Europe's activism,
assigning moral responsibility to India and China
to influence Myanmar. The United States has talked
about sanctions without defining a time frame.
Washington has urged India and China to do more to
"support the cause of freedom" of the people of
Myanmar.
Tom Casey, the US State
Department deputy spokesman, said the US
"specifically called on India, China and the ASEAN
[Association of Southeast Asian Nations] countries
to do more to support the cause of political
dialogue and of freedom for the people of Burma
[Myanmar]".
The Indian official told Asia
Times Online, "New Delhi understands a bit about
the hypocrisy in the latest utterances from Europe
and the US that will have to back words with
action. European subsidiaries and companies
continue to invest in Myanmar and have no
intentions to withdraw. The Western governments
should put pressure on them first."
Indeed, New Delhi is keen to push a
pro-Myanmar agenda to leverage energy sources and
reduce the influence of China, which has gas
projects in the country.
Pulled up by the
Prime Minister's Office for allowing China to
steal a march in Myanmar, India's Oil Minister,
Murli Deora, visited the country at the time of
the protests and pledged Indian investments of
US$150 million for gas exploration.
India's state-run explorer - Oil and
Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) - and its counterpart, the
Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, signed
production-sharing contracts for the development
of three deep-water exploration blocks off
Myanmar's western Rakhine coast. All three blocks
are believed to have good hydrocarbon potential as
they are close to shallow water blocks A-1 and A-3
where ONGC is part of a consortium developing a
gas find.
Energy-hungry India and China
are in competition over the massive Shwe natural
gas development project, in which ONGC and India's
utility Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) are
partners under the majority stakeholder, South
Korea's Daewoo.
Irked by delays in
implementing the Myanmar-Bangladesh-India
pipeline, and with strategic support from China at
international forums, Myanmar has inked a
memorandum of understanding with PetroChina to
supply 6.5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas from
Block A of the Shwe gas fields in the Bay of
Bengal for over 30 years. PetroChina is the listed
subsidiary of China National Petroleum
Corporation.
The advent of China as an
end-user creates an awkward situation as India
will effectively be supplying gas to China, its
biggest competitor for oil and gas.
Shwe
is expected to generate up to $600 million in
revenue every year for Myanmar over the next two
decades.
The competition is stiff.
Companies from South Korea, Thailand and US energy
giant Chevron are looking to exploit Myanmar's
natural resources. In recent statements following
the unrest, Daewoo said it has no plans to change
investments. "Politics is politics. Economics is
economics," a spokesperson said.
France's
Total and Malaysia's Petronas currently pump gas
from Myanmar through a pipeline to Thailand, which
takes the bulk of Myanmar's gas output. Total has
defended its presence in Myanmar, saying oil and
gas reserves are not necessarily located in
democracies.
This week, authorities in
Belgium moved to reopen a case brought by Myanmar
refugees alleging that Total was involved in
crimes against humanity in the country. (See France's Total mired in
Myanmar Asia Times Online, October 4,
2007.) New York-based Human Rights Watch has
called on firms invested in Myanmar to use their
influence on the military regime to end its
abuses.
London-based Amnesty International
has said that China is the main source of arms for
Myanmar, followed by India, Serbia, Russia,
Ukraine and other countries, and urged them to
stop weapons supplies. Amnesty recently reported
that India plans to sell military helicopters to
Myanmar in a move that could undermine a European
Union arms embargo.
But Myanmar's proven
gas reserves of 19 tcf at the end of 2006 are
proving to be very difficult to resist. Recently,
PTT Exploration and Production International
Limited of Thailand found natural gas in its Block
M-9 offshore concession, indicating a reserve of 8
tcf, official Myanmar media reports said.
This year, Indian intelligence agencies
cautioned New Delhi about the possible shutout of
Indian interests by Russian and Chinese oil firms
in Myanmar.
Clearly, fast-developing India
has more pressing issues to tackle than backing
ideals of democracy in Myanmar.
This is
especially so when reports say that Iran and
Pakistan have decided to move ahead with a gas
pipeline without the participation of India. New
Delhi, it is widely believed, has been putting off
negotiations on the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas
pipeline due to pressure from Washington. The US
does not want India to deal with Tehran due to the
latter's independent nuclear program.
"We
prefer it [IPI] to be a tripartite deal, but if it
does not happen we will sign it with the
Pakistanis," caretaker Iranian Oil Minister Gholam
Hossein Nozari recently told reporters.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
(Copyright
2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
