Diplomacy: Asean Regional Forum [Manila Serenade]

At its first post-Pokhran global meeting, despite a cacophony of hostile criticism, India manages to get key countries to tap their feet to its nuclear tune.

INTERVIEW: JASWANT SINGH
"We withstood the challenge well"

Jaswant Singh is happy that there was no unanimity in condemning India. He spoke to Senior Editor Manoj Joshi in Manila. Excerpts:

Jaswant Singh

Why is the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) important?
It is the only forum in Asia which deals with security-related issues and bridges the Asia-Pacific to the Indian Ocean. As the ASEAN describes it, "The footprint of our concerns cover India." India's engagement in this forum, where the European Union, G-8 and P-5 are present, is most significant because we participate in its deliberations as equals. In the present context, it has enabled India to establish contact with the ASEAN, US, Russia, China and Japan and provided a great opportunity to put across our point of view.

What have we achieved on the nuclear issue at this meeting?
India really placed a big question mark before the post-Cold War global order with its nuclear tests. For India to expect that the rest of the globe would be indifferent to this development is not realistic ... India is used to diplomacy of the old mode. The idiom, the demands, the language and priorities of nuclear diplomacy are a new field for India. The country's nuclear diplomacy was under test in the ARF, not so much in the ASEAN meeting but most definitely against the P-5 and G-8 countries which were there. Confronted with this situation, we withstood the challenge well.

What does that mean?
We had to carry the conviction of our rationale based on our national priorities and imperatives. There was no unanimity in condemning India between ASEAN and ARF and within P-5 and G-8 which is an aspect of our nuclear diplomacy carrying conviction. Along with the concern about the tests in South Asia, an item high on India's list -- disarmament related to Article VI of the NPT -- was placed on the agenda. This is a matter of extreme discomfiture to nuclear weapons states.

What about talks with Madeleine Albright?
They are part of the talks that have taken place in the past three rounds with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. In that sense they provided a continuation and confirmation of the US position. I cannot comment on the substance of the continuing discussions.

This was the first round of high-level talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan. Is there any positive movement here?
We spent an hour together, double the scheduled time. We placed on the table our respective concerns. The significance of the meeting was that it took place. Also significant was its duration and the confirmation that there was interest on both sides in continuing contact at various levels.

The message was in the medium. A lilting song-and-dance number at the conclusion of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Manila said it all: the Pokhran nuclear tests had changed India's relationship with the world and its Asia-Pacific neighbours. But India, despite its new status of "NAM nuclear weapons state" -- as Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas once quipped -- remains an unthreatening neighbour. It is committed to a relationship that goes beyond security to closer ties in the areas of investment, trade, culture and cooperation in science and technology.

The Indian delegation to the fifth meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), at which the ASEAN and its nine "dialogue partners" -- the US, Russia, China, Japan, India, European Union, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand -- discussed security issues, was led by the prime minister's special envoy Jaswant Singh. India had a dual purpose -- to use the ARF to articulate its nuclear concerns and the Post-Ministerial Conference (PMC) to signal a larger strategic commitment with a region which, despite its recent woes, is an economic dynamo. India's trade with the region tripled from US$ 2 billion (Rs 8,400 crore) in 1992 to US$ 6 billion (Rs 25,200 crore) in 1996.

Philippines Foreign Minister Domingo L. Siazon Jr, who chaired the ARF on July 27, said that the tests were "the most contentious issue in our deliberations". The hawks led by Australia wanted an outright condemnation of India, while most ASEAN members insisted that the forum should retain its character by avoiding censure of a member.

Indian "nuclear diplomacy" and the ASEAN's desire to ensure a balanced relationship with its large "dialogue partners" like China and the US resulted in mild criticism of India. This, however, was offset by an insistence that the P-5 countries fulfil obligations under the NPT to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Alatas, representing a country that retains concerns about China, declared that while he "deeply regretted" the Indian tests, there would always be incentive for nations to cross the nuclear threshold as long as "double standards and hypocrisy prevail".

Singh put across the Indian rationale for a "minimal deterrent" and spelt out its future course of action -- possible adherence to the test ban treaty, commitment to negotiate the fissile material cut-off treaty and a no-first-use pledge. He also let the cat among the pigeons by offering to sign the South East Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ) treaty. For the ASEAN to accept the offer would mean accepting India as a "nuclear weapons state" but a rejection would fatally compromise the SEANWFZ. Significantly, the ASEAN's efforts are being blocked by the P-5, principally China.

Not surprisingly, Siazon paid repeated tributes to Singh's ability to "articulate India's position very well" and said that as a result the ASEAN now understood India's point of view.

The Indian participation could mark an intensification of the "Look East" policy initiated by former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1991. At the PMC, Singh conveyed India's offer to provide government-to-government credit and counter-trade to help ASEAN overcome its economic problems. This has brought home to the ASEAN the importance of India in stabilising their economies.

Though the ASEAN's concerns were at the centre of the meetings, India had to work in a larger and more complex context -- the economic problems of the region as well as the growing promiscuity of big-power relationships. A month after its Beijing tango, the US appears to be embracing Russia. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Russian Foreign Minister Yevgenyi Primakov underlined this by addressing a joint press conference after the ARF meeting and acting out this relationship in a skit at the ministerial dinner the next day.

Through all this, India's main task was to calm the post-Pokhran tremors. The US decision to let its backers, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, take on India while sitting back and talking the language of negotiation is being seen as a positive sign. The occasion also served to ease India's deadlock with its major neighbour, China. Singh's hour-long meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan may not have achieved anything significant, but it has cleared the air somewhat. Both sides have confirmed the need to continue the dialogue, though Indian officials say they are not sure whether China has yet overcome its Pokhran blues. Tang's speech at the ARF session archly noted that instead of "creating imaginary enemies or fabricating sources of threat", countries should realise that economic and social development were an easier way "to move into the ranks of strong nations of the world".

Perhaps the greatest relief for the Indian diplomats was that the 'K' word was scarcely mentioned. When asked whether the ASEAN would like to resolve the Kashmir dispute, Siazon tartly replied, "We do not wish to involve ourselves in Kashmir, it is outside our footprint. We'll leave it to some other braver country."

The ASEAN has shown great skill in weaving security concerns and economic policy since its formation in 1965. This is obviously an area from which India can learn a thing or two.

THE 'FUNPOLITIK'

The Indians, they said, were good, but the American-Russian show-stopper starring Madeleine Albright (Maria) and Yevgenyi Primakov (as Yevgenyi) was brilliant -- an East-West romantic spoof on the popular musical West Side Story. The occasion: the customary song-and-dance skit at the concluding dinner at the ASEAN ministerial meeting. East-West story. Excerpt:

Maria: Yevgenyi, I just met a boy named Yevgenyi/And suddenly that name means no zero sum game for me.
Yevgenyi: I just met a girl named Madeleine Albright/And suddenly I find, she thinks she'll change my mind for free.
Maria: My dear, they fired the whole cabinet but you're here /you survived the last purge /you won't have to sing a dirge with me.
Yevgenyi: Madeleine Albright/ She's over the top but she's alright/from Prague to Manila/She's stomped like Godzilla.

The theme probably began to ring in Jaswant Singh's mind in the tedium of the flights to New York and Frankfurt. It was a song from a 1960 hit film sung by Mukesh: Chodo kal ki baatein/kal ke baat purani/naye daur mein likhenge/mil kar nayi kahani/hum Hindustani, hum Hindustani (Yesterday's events are now a part of the past. In the new era, we Indians will build a new future together). But Mukesh's patriotic rendering was far too straight for the song-and-dance skit, said South Block's brightest. A team of high-level diplomats then sat down to weave the song to the new theme of India's Pokhran tests. "Why such a fuss over a few crackers in the Thar", went the song, "They weren't as loud as Nevada and Lop Nor/ Sherrif (Nawaz Sharif) took his ones and joined the fun/ Evita (Albright) lost some sleep, Juan (Jiang Zemin) proliferated in the sun." The song went on to extol Indo-ASEAN friendship: "We Hindustani with you Aseani."

There was a quick improvisation too. Team leader Singh's sense of humour could not be contained for long. After hearing the US-Russian duet, he added one more line and rendered it in his own deep baritone voice: "Now that the supers are over the top and can't bang any more/ It's the turn of the Hindustanis/ Hum Hindustani, Hum Hindustani." All this talent led to a case of severe stage-fright. Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan's hands shook visibly as he weakly belted out a song, based on a Beijing Opera theme.