Space: US, India’s next frontier

As India and the US celebrate a space summit between NASA and ISRO in Bangalore this week, the emphasis on both sides has been to focus on t...

As India and the US celebrate a space summit between NASA and ISRO in Bangalore this week, the emphasis on both sides has been to focus on the positive ‘‘four decades of cooperation’’ in science and technology rather than Washington’s tough export control rules which prevent the sale of ‘‘dual-use’’ high-technology components to nations which have refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). ISRO officials have said, for example, that India recently lost out on two contracts to launch foreign satellites because these satellites had certain US components.

Few diplomats should, indeed, know better about ISRO’s collaborations abroad than Ronen Sen, India’s newly named Ambassador to the US. Sen was ambassador to Moscow in the early ’90s when Glavkosmos, the Russian space agency, had a contract to supply liquid fuel cryogenic engines to ISRO and transfer the relevant technology. But the Americans cried foul and forced Moscow to cancel the Indian contract. The irony is that ISRO’s Russian inheritance and its own highly focused work ethic is now attracting top-class agencies such as NASA.

Still, ISRO seems happy to cooperate with NASA on other apolitical issues such as remote-sensing and possibly joint foreign launches. Space is one of the ‘‘quartet’’ of issues, besides civilian nuclear safety, missile defence and high-technology trade, that constitute the ‘‘next steps in strategic partnership’’ between the two countries.

A power-packed party in Moscow

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A high-profile international seminar that will be held just outside Moscow towards the end of this month, celebrating 50 years of peaceful use of nuclear weapons by Russia, will be attended by the creme de la creme of scientists.

India’s top nuclear scientists R Chidambaram, currently Principal Scientific Advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as well as BARC Chairman Anil Kakodkar—who were both instrumental in India’s nuclear tests in Pokharan in 1998—are expected to participate in the seminar. So is National Security Advisor J N Dixit. If he does travel, it will mark his first trip abroad since he took over his new job.

Dixit is also likely to use his visit to meet a variety of top people in the Russian establishment. Many, including Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, are India hands—Fradkov was the deputy minister for trade in the mid-90s and in that capacity served on the Indo-Russian joint commission. Other Indiawallahs in key places in Moscow are Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov and Chief of the National Security Council Igor Ivanov. Russia’s outgoing ambassador to India Sasha Kadakin is likely to go back as Foreign Secretary, while Vyacheslav Trubnikov, a former Tass news agency correspondent in Delhi, is likely to take his place.

Delhi feels EU warmth in J-K

A team of European Union parliamentarians led by the redoubtable John Cushnahan is travelling to Srinagar this week, a measure of the confidence with which New Delhi is dealing with foreign diplomats on this issue. Cushnahan & Co’s trip comes in the wake of an EU-India round table event in the Kashmiri capital last week, on the margins of which the EU Ambassador to India told the press that Kashmir was like ‘‘any other part’’ of India—also a measure of the distance European diplomats have travelled in their views on Kashmir.

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Predictably, the statement raised the hackles of the Hurriyat groups.

The EU parliamentarian visit had been planned much before the first Foreign Secretary-level dialogue between India and Pakistan this weekend, but it certainly comes at an appropriate time. Cushnahan remembers the time he was in Pakistan just about two years ago, then heading a team of 52 EU observers for the Pakistani elections. His comments on Pakistan’s inability to come to terms with democracy and human rights, despite the considerably changed circumstances since 9/11, would have gladdened most hearts in New Delhi.

He was reportedly critical of Musharraf’s refusal to allow Benazir Bhutto as well as Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif to participate in the elections. Of course, his comments didn’t go down well with Islamabad. Erstwhile spokesman Aziz Khan—currently Pakistan high commissioner to India—characterised them as an ‘‘interference’’ in the internal affairs of Pakistan.

Saran gets a seat in Pak talks

Foreign Secretary-designate and India’s Ambassador to Nepal Shyam Saran will participate in the first Foreign Secretary-level talks with his counterpart Riaz Khokhar later this week. Since Saran is going to be FS for two whole years, the new Government decided that it was best that he sit in and get a first-hand knowledge of the subject.

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Meanwhile, Shashank, the current Foreign Secretary, is in Moscow for a seminar on ‘‘global challenges’’, whatever that means.