Bush calls India an ally in cause of democracy, but Delhi's friends aren't always Bush's

Associated Press

New Delhi: In the carefully lit ruins of an ancient fort, U.S. President George W. Bush ended his recent trip to India a visit that helped ease years of mutual distrust and ushered in a landmark nuclear agreement by insisting that "India has an historic duty to support democracy around the world."

Bush went on to list a handful of countries where, he said, people were suffering under oppressive regimes. Among them: Iran, Syria and Myanmar.

What he did not mention was that India has close ties to all three, and has little intention of actively spreading democracy to any of them.

New Delhi's foreign policy has occasionally raised eyebrows in Washington its friendship with Iran has been a concern at times, and it has been urged to put pressure on Myanmar to reform but it has shown little sign so far of impeding the U.S.-India nuclear deal, which is currently wending its way through Washington.

"While (ties to countries like Iran) may cause some friction, both India and the United States will learn to accommodate those frictions," said Ashok K. Mehta, a retired Indian general and a writer on security issues. "A strategic partnership does not come down to a black and white line."

Sometimes, though, India's foreign relations stand in stark contrast to Bush's comments.

Just a few days after Bush returned to Washington, Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam left for a trip to Myanmar, also known as Burma, where a brutal, long-ruling junta has suppressed ethnic minorities, gunned down demonstrators and kept opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for years.

Though Kalam raised the issue of democratic reforms with the junta, India has also made clear it was more interested in Myanmar's energy supplies and Indian militants hiding along the India-Myanmar border.

The visit infuriated the Burmese exile community.

"As the world's biggest democracy, India is not doing much" to advance the cause of democratic change in Myanmar, said Soe Aung, a spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma, an umbrella group of opposition exiles.

Given India's energy needs and security concerns, it "will support the military regime in one way or another," he said in a telephone interview from Thailand.

In the days since Kalam's visit, both the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have urged India to press Myanmar for democratic reforms.

"India is a democracy and of course should raise this," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told U.S. lawmakers at a recent Senate subcommittee hearing.

But New Delhi offers no apologies for its ties to countries like Myanmar.

"While we encourage and support democracy, we would not like to ... be seen as thrusting democracy on any country," said Mehta.

Instead, top officials repeatedly insist, India's policies are rooted in self-interest.

In some ways, India's foreign relations are mirrored in Washington, which finds itself allied to such unlikely friends as Saudi Arabia with its secretive, autocratic government largely because of energy needs.

"The basic objective of our foreign policy, as well as our domestic policy, is to promote our enlightened national interests," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told reporters earlier this year.

With an economy growing at 8 percent and limited domestic resources, that interest is often energy: Myanmar, Syria and Iran are all current or potential suppliers of oil or natural gas to India.

But it is India's relationship with Iran that gets the most attention.

"We have a strong and valuable relationship with Iran which we would like to take forward," Singh told parliament in February, noting Indo-Iranian ties "go back several millennia."

But if such relationships sometimes make Washington uncomfortable, the backlash has been fierce when the United States has openly put pressure on India over Tehran.

Indian lawmakers were infuriated when U.S. Ambassador David C. Mulford said in January that if India did not support referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program that the India-U.S. nuclear pact could "die" in the U.S. Congress, which still must act to get the agreement finalized.

Despite the anger over Mulford's comments, India still voted with the United States to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, where Tehran could face sanctions.

Less than two months after the vote and just three weeks after Bush was in Delhi Iranian Vice President Esfandiyar Rahim-Masha'i came to town.

He insisted relations between India and Iran were getting better all the time.