A wrong benchmark for Indo-Gulf ties

India's 'look East' policy that took its Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh to China was an affirmation of the minister's much touted forward-looking foreign policy initiatives that have propelled India onto the world stage.

But while he won plaudits for establishing new linkages with a prickly neighbour, there is an urgent need for India to 'look west'.

It must now seek to strengthen tenuous ties with its own immediate neighbourhood, particularly with the Arab world in the troubled context of the atrocities being committed by Israel on the Palestinian people, and the rising horror here in the Gulf over the targeting of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat.

The killings in India's once prosperous western state, if not stopped, have the potential of not just inhibiting India's outward looking foreign policy from growing, but could prove as much of a stumbling block in the improvement of relations with the Arabs, as Kashmir once was.

While the question of whether India has a 'look west' policy at all is debatable, the form it should take is not, given the Indian government's two-track policy in the Middle East.

Under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, the policy has, on the one hand, translated into stepped-up contacts with the Jewish state of Israel, albeit on a military level, with a direct co-relation to growing ties with the U.S. On the other, it has allowed older ties with President Arafat to become moribund.

A foreign policy, that puts India's strategic and security interests first and her crying need for Israeli and U.S. military hardware and intelligence, to contain what it sees as continued infiltration from neighbouring Pakistan, should not ignore two things.

India's energy security needs a sustained energy-related partnership with its main suppliers, the Gulf states. But India's moral standing in the world cannot be held hostage to a government's myopic and limited link with a nation that is fundamentally anti-Islam.

The contrast between Singh's China visit and his last visit to the Saudi kingdom cannot be more marked. With China, Singh and his team have moved step by step to connect at increasingly higher levels, demonstrating India's tactical shift towards engaging with the more powerful Asian superpower.

Its deafening silence on the unfolding tragedy in the West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus and Ramallah, however and the consequent erosion of goodwill after Singh's January 2001 visit to Riyadh, cannot go unnoticed.

India's policy of building economic bridges, as it has done successfully with China in opening up her north-eastern states to commercial interaction, is the warp and woof of the forward thinking initiative by the foreign office that attempts to weave economic links before tackling contentious issues like border and territorial disputes.

India watchers who commend Singh for his bid to break China's strategic encirclement of India, by reviving the fabled road and rail links to Mandalay, and Bangkok, say that India has failed to capitalise on the inherent strategic assets that it already has in place in the Gulf and the Middle East.

"When it comes to the Middle East and the Palestinian issue, India's foreign policy seems to have hit a road block," a South Asia expert said. It must factor into its calculations that one-third of India's energy needs are met by the Gulf states, and at least 10-12 per cent of the workforce in the region come from India.

The profile of that workforce has changed. While the labour force continues to be drawn from India, more and more professionals, particularly in the IT field are finding jobs in a region, looking to grow in IT and energy related fields.

The preferred partner

India's political and military significance after the nuclear tests, it's attractive markets make it the preferred partner for growth, the expert said. Yet, India ranks way below Japan, for instance and China, in its economic interaction, points out Hussein Al Athel, Secretary General of Riyadh's Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In Saudi Arabia, officials privately admit that their country's disenchantment with the Taliban, the Al Qaida extremist elements that have proved a source of instability, have worked in India's favour vis-a-vis the Kashmir issue.

"The Kingdom's position on Kashmir now emphasises the bilateral process, with a dialogue with Pakistan on the basis of existing agreements like Simla and Lahore," a senior foreign policy expert said in Riyadh. "There is acceptance the solution as sought by Pakistan cannot be delinked from India's concerns relating to cross-border terrorism," he added.

India's ability to translate this into a stronger backing in world forums had failed in the past. But the gradual shift in Saudi policy was demonstrated when it became the first Gulf country to send aid after the Gujarat earthquake and second, when it categorically condemned the attack on India's parliament as an act of terrorism.

A first

"This is the first occasion when Saudi Arabia made a pro-India comment on an issue involving 'jihad'," the expert said.

Points out Dr. Bandar Al Aiban, a senior member of Saudi Arabia's powerful Majlis Ash Shura, and Chairman of its Political Affairs Committee "we see India as a force for stability and peace in the region, we value it for its secular credentials, for being a moral force for peace, and we would like India to speak up and play its role as a power in the region."

Dr. Aiban says India's policy on Palestine, and now, the events in Gujarat could cost it dear. Palestine is under siege, and India, which should have shaken out plans to help rebuild the Palestinian National Authority, whose every last vestige of authority the Israelis have sought to remove, is caught in a web of silence.

Barring the mandatory statements from the Ministry of External Affairs and a statement at the UN, India has kept its distance.

As a South Asian diplomat said, "Foreign policy is not made by statements. It requires you to be interactive, to build ties with that country based on the broad, strategic interests you share, be they political or economic or both."

"If its hesitancy to speak out, stems from its worry over what Israel will think, they should realise that Israel is not the superpower, it is the U.S.," the diplomat added.

Politically too, it is at an impasse. The recent visit by Arafat's envoy to Delhi and the manner in which he was cold-shouldered raises questions on whether India, caught in its own domestic political crises, will be able to shake off its traditional lethargy - unless it involves immediate neighbour Pakistan and now increasingly the U.S.- to build a foreign policy that addresses its own broader strategic interests in the Middle East region.

Indian foreign policy experts who advise the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government on foreign policy issues say that backing Palestine has brought few rewards in the past, with the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) for instance, continuing to issue hostile statements vis-a-vis India's position on the state of Kashmir.

Diplomats who deal with the region have remarked on India's closeness to the Iranian regime yielding equally littl