While External Affairs Minister S M Krishna made a special effort to reach out to the Iranian political leadership and re-energise bilateral engagement on the margins of the G-15 meet at Tehran,the response has been rather lukewarm with Iran still holding back from specifying dates for a meeting of the bilateral joint commission. After a meeting between Krishna and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Monday,which lasted for about 25 minutes,it was agreed to have the next meeting of the joint commission here. But no dates were announced,though the assurance of having it at the earliest was expressed. It may be recalled that an official-level interaction had taken place in March when an Iranian delegation had visited India to hold preparatory talks for the meeting,which has not taken place for a year-and-a-half now. The last such meeting took place in November 2008 when Pranab Mukherjee was the External Affairs minister. India had,in March,shown its willingness to discuss the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline in May. However,there has been no response from Tehran on this issue. Given the fact that Mottaki had studied in Bangalore,it was expected that Krishna would be able to work on that connect. But so far it hasnt gone the way New Delhi would have expected it to. In fact,Krishna was supposed to meet Mottaki in Thimphu on the sidelines of the SAARC summit,but that meeting did not take place. The official reason given was that Mottakis flight had got delayed. Krishna was also expected to travel to Iran in March for the Persian New Year celebrations,but Tehran gave confirmation only 10 days before the trip,making it impossible for Krishna to reschedule his prior political commitments in Bangalore. Such coincidences have been rather frequent,feeding the assumption that Iran wants to maintain a distance after India voted in favour of the resolution at the IAEA to move the UNSC on the Irans nuclear programme. While India has made it clear that it is against the sanctions route,there is considerable suspicion given Irans apprehensions over close India-US ties. While the Ministry of External Affairs officially plays it down,the cause of worry is that India has been showing all the intent to expand bilateral engagement with Iran,but getting over the IAEA vote appears to be more difficult than it was thought to be. Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao had visited Iran in February when both sides seem to have agreed on broadening the scope of cooperation in Afghanistan. But the official talks are yet to translate into concrete results. For the record,MEA said the meeting between Krishna and Mottaki was useful and substantive and hoped that regular high-level exchanges will give momentum to the bilateral relationship.
