Mishra to witness US-Iran handshake at Munich

The annual security conference in Munich later this week will be keenly watched because of the presence of US defence secretary Donald Rumsf...

The annual security conference in Munich later this week will be keenly watched because of the presence of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharazzi, representing a nation on the cusp of an Islamic spring.

Principal secretary Brajesh Mishra will represent New Delhi just as he has been doing for the past four years. Pakistan, America’s latest ally in the war against terrorism, was reportedly considered for an invitation, but finally dropped from the list. Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov and NATO secretary-general George Robertson will also be present.

German foreign minister Joschka Fisher will also host defence ministers from France and Greece as well as a senior member of China’s People’s Liberation Army.

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But Munich’s biggest surprise is Kharazzi, whose participation in the conference on the eve of a US-led war against Iraq must formally end the ignonimous and very bitter chapter in US-Iran ties that has continued for some 23 years. A Rumsfeld-Kharazzi handshake in front of worldwide TV could in fact become the first blow, analysts here say, against the autocratic citadel that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has built around himself.

But Kharazzi’s presence at Munich is far more important than a rapprochement with the US. It is intended to signal Shia Iran’s willingness to support its neighbouring Iraqi Shia population — as large as 60 per cent — in an uprising against the Sunni ‘dictator’ Hussein.

Significantly, over the past weeks and months as the US has built a case for war against Iraq, it has made serious overtures to anti-Iraqi Shia groups also based within Iran — such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — that is militarily equipped and trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Interestingly, with India being Kharazzi’s last port of call before he emplanes for Munich — he was accompanying Iranian president Khatami here barely a week ago — Brajesh Mishra is likely to be called upon to provide a first-hand assessment of the Iranian situation to his conference colleagues.

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The impending war in Iraq, in fact, was the subject of quite an intense conversation between Kharazzi and External Affairs minister Yashwant Sinha in New Delhi. The Iranian foreign minister, despite Teheran’s growing links with the Iraqi Shia opposition both at home and abroad, continued to be quite critical of the US-led war in the region. His implied message was that if the US was allowed to get away with Iraq, Iran would be next in line.

In return, Sinha maintained an enigmatic silence, refusing to be drawn into either criticism or support of Washington’s position. India, he persisted, would support a UN-led resolution on a possible invasion.

All these contradictory strains in international policy will manifest themselves in Munich, analysts add. To top the irony, Rumsfeld will be returning to the heart of old Europe — a concept that he derided only a week ago — to invoke the charge of a brand, new brigade for Iraq.