NEW DELHI – By voting for a Western-sponsored resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meant to reprimand Iran, India has signaled the collapse of its long-standing policy of nonalignment.
Capping recent agreements signed with the United States on military and civilian nuclear cooperation within an increasingly closer "strategic partnership" with it, this constitutes the greatest shift in New Delhi’s foreign policy since independence from colonial rule in 1947.
"By taking this disgraceful step, India is indicating that it has become a camp-follower of Washington," said Gulshan Dietl, a West Asia expert at the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University here.
The resolution of the IAEA board of governors came at the end of a week of hectic lobbying and manipulation in Vienna and other major capitals of the world, centered around a draft prepared by Germany, France, and Britain or EU-3, a group that claims to have been playing a mediatory role between the U.S. and Iran.
Iran insists that its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful and within the rights and obligations defined by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The IAEA has not held Iran to be in substantive breach of the NPT, only of not disclosing everything about its uranium enrichment history.
But the U.S. claims that Iran is bent upon developing nuclear weapons and wants it hauled up before the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions.
The final resolution is a modified version of the EU-3’s original draft. It falls short of referring Iran to the Security Council. But it prepares the ground for doing so while citing Iran’s history of "concealment" of its nuclear activities, and the IAEA director general’s report on them. It asks Iran to stop all activity related to uranium enrichment.
Further, it says that Iran’s "noncompliance" with NPT safeguards and the IAEA’s statute "gives rise to questions that are within the competence of the Security Council," given its responsibility for maintaining "international peace and security."
The resolution furnishes the basis for the next logical step, of referring Iran to the Security Council and mounting coercive pressure on it to dismantle its nuclear program.
The motion was passed 22:1, with 12 countries abstaining. Venezuela was the only state in the 35-strong IAEA board of governors to oppose it. Among those who abstained were Russia, China, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and even Pakistan.
The U.S. is triumphant over the passage of the resolution and has expressed its gratitude to India for helping out. Iran is outraged and has condemned the resolution as "illegal and unacceptable."
India’s decision to vote with the U.S. was taken even before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit in mid-September to France and the U.S., where he met President George W. Bush. The Hindu newspaper disclosed on Sept. 17 that New Delhi had already decided to vote in that manner if it came to the crunch.
After the resolution, the crisis over Iran’s nuclear activities is likely to worsen. This takes the wind out of the sails of New Delhi’s argument that it voted for the resolution because it expands the room for diplomacy to resolve the crisis and because it avoids an immediate reference to the Security Council.
Strangely enough, India has entered a number of caveats and reservations about the resolution. India is opposed to "Iran being declared as noncompliant with its safeguards agreements" and does not agreed that the "current situation could constitute a threat to international peace and security."
"These objections pertain to the very substance of the motion and warranted at least abstention from, if not opposition to, the vote," says Hamid Ansari, India’s former ambassador to Iran and a West Asia expert, who has closely followed the IAEA’s debate on Iran.
Yet, India went along with the "yes" vote on the plea that it had persuaded the EU-3 to modify its original tough resolution; since its concerns were addressed in the toned-down motion, it would not have been proper to abstain.
"But that original resolution was a mere ploy," says Ansari. "The EU-3 knew it wouldn’t go through and sprang the already preferred milder draft at the last minute, thus forcing a vote in which India would break ranks with a number of Nonaligned Movement [NAM] countries such as South Africa, Brazil, and Malaysia, the current chair of NAM."
Adds Ansari, "The EU-3 was no longer acting independently, but as a surrogate of the U.S. So India ended up as the surrogate of a surrogate, demeaning its policy of independence. This speaks of poor diplomacy with respect to NAM, as well as a confused foreign policy."
For decades, NAM acted in unison at the IAEA. Now, it stands split, with countries like Peru, Ghana, and Ecuador joining hands with the U.S.-EU while Malaysia, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, which have been proactive in NAM, abstained.
"The Indian vote," says Dietl, "militates against the national interest and will greatly lower India’s global stature and credibility. If India could stab a friendly country like Iran in the back, despite its close economic and political relations with it, it won’t be trusted by many other developing countries."
India’s vote is likely to jeopardize a grand project it is currently negotiating: an Iran-India gas pipeline passing through Pakistan. This enjoys wide domestic support and has been seen as the key to promoting peace and prosperity in the South Asia-West Asia region, as well as opening a conduit to energy-rich Central Asia.
The Manmohan Singh government’s decision has come under spirited attacks domestically both from the left and the right. The Left sees it as "betrayal" of the legacy of solidarity with the "nonaligned and developing countries" and succumbing to U.S. pressure. The Left, a crucial ally of the ruling United Progressive Alliance, led by the Congress party, says the resolution "virtually" converts India into a U.S. ally and camp-follower.
The right-wing, pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too has opposed India’s decision to vote for the EU-3 resolution in Vienna and accused the government of "surreptitiously" making a major foreign policy shift.
Jaswant Singh, who served as foreign minister during the BJP’s years in power from 1998-2004 said the government was "spreading confusion on important policy matters impinging directly on national security."
Singh said there was now a serious question mark on the proposed gas pipeline from Iran, especially because the government has refused to spell out whether "it stands or not."
A former senior official of the National Security Council, under the BJP dispensation, said he feared that "the vote [at the IAEA] will decrease India’s bargaining power vis-à-vis the U.S. and generate anti-India suspicions in China."
India strenuously denies that the vote in Vienna is linked to its eagerness to get the U.S. Congress’ approval for a far-reaching nuclear cooperation deal it signed in July with Washington. However, The New York Times and other newspapers have reported that the U.S. explicitly made such a linkage and told Singh in mid-September that India "must choose" between Iran and the U.S.
India’s concern to have its nuclear weapons status normalized has become an obsession. "This is driving New Delhi to try to gatecrash into the global nuclear order based on the NPT, although it is not even a signatory to that treaty," argues Dietl.
"All in all, the Vienna vote is a remarkably bad bargain, and announces India’s capitulation to the U.S.," Dietl said.
(Inter Press Service)
