Pm To Seek trategic Partnership' On Russia Visit

Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda will embark upon a mission in the new year to build a strategic partnership with Russia, when he visits Moscow sometime in February.

Dates for the visit have not been finalised yet, but external affairs minister I K Gujral will be in the Russian capital towards the end of January to prepare for the trip.

Gujral will combine this with the third Indo-Russian joint commission meeting scheduled to take place in Moscow from January 27 through 29. Gujral's Russian counterpart on the joint commission is deputy prime minister Yury Yarov, an old India hand.

 

Gowda's trip to Russia was slated to have taken place soon after he became the prime minister last year. Both sides were keen a high-level visit take place in the autumn of 1996: it would have been Gowda's first foreign trip as prime minister and, after the beating India received at the hands of western nations on the comprehensive test ban treaty CTBT, New Delhi hoped a Moscow visit would boost Gowda's image at home and abroad.

That visit could not take place because of Russian president Boris Yeltsin's continuing ill-health, as a result of the heart attack he suffered during his re-election campaign last summer. No Russian official then was willing to guarantee that Yeltsin would receive Gowda.

But the Russian president seems to have recovered from the bypass surgery he had undergone in November and last week, attended all the meetings with Chinese premier Li Peng during his visit to Moscow.

Both India and Russia are expected to stress the continuity factor in the relationship and the high regard they hold for each other, despite other material and strategic relationships that Moscow has embarked upon with western nations.

The emphasis will be on building a strategic partnership with each other. Since as many as 41 agreements have been signed with Moscow after the break-up of the former Soviet Union, no major pacts are on the anvil this time. The significance of the visit will be the visit itself.

An influential section of the Moscow establishment are keen to maintain close ties with Asian allies, especially India, even if the president's priorities remain with the US and western Europe.

Russia's foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov has gone a long way in correcting the pro-West tilt given by former foreign minister and close Yeltsin aide Andrei Kozyrev.

Indeed, Prime Minister Gowda has set himself a hectic pace before the budget session in late February; he is visiting Bangladesh on January 6 and 7 and, at the end of the month, will be attending the World Economic Forum at Davos.