Opinion Krishna’s Korea

No wonder then that the external affairs minister S. M. Krishna’s visit to Seoul last week got a bit of Beijing’s attention. Just as South Block takes note of every major Chinese move in its periphery in the subcontinent and the Indian Ocean,Beijing does monitor the Indian diplomatic forays in its East Asian frontyard.

And it is not often that Indian leaders travel to Korea and they rarely talk high politics. While India’s economic relationship with South Korea has significantly expanded in the last two decades,political relations have tended to lag. It is only after Delhi invited the South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to be the chief guest of this year’s Republic day celebrations that a new dynamic between the two has begun to shape up.

Krishna’s task last week in Seoul was to start turning the words in the bilateral declaration on strategic partnership issued during President Lee’s visit into concrete steps. As elsewhere these days civil nuclear cooperation was high on Krishna’s agenda in South Korea,which has one of the world’s most advanced civilian nuclear power programmes.

The Korean companies surprised the world last December year when they won a US$ 40 billion contract for building power reactors in the United Arab Emirates against stiff competition from French and American-Japanese reactor builders.

Krishna has also sought to expand Delhi’s collaboration with Seoul on space technology. He invited South Korea,which has embarked on an ambitious space programme of its own,to join the Indian expedition to the moon with Chandrayaan-2.

He has also invited Seoul to pool its naval resources with India in promoting maritime security. As major importers of oil,both South Korea and India have a strong stake in protecting the sea lines of communication between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. The coast guards of the two countries conduct an occasional joint exercise and this could be extended to the navies. As India seeks to expand its domestic defence industrial base,the advanced sectors of the Korean industry can make a major contribution.

An early visit to South Korea by the defence minister A. K. Antony could help turn the many natural complementarities between the two nations in the security sector into mutually beneficial and long-term cooperation.

Eastward,Ho!

If Krishna was focused on bringing Korea into the ambit of India’s Look East policy,our navy has just completed one of its frequent deployments to the South China Sea that began in 2000. During a month long deployment,an Indian naval contingent of four ships made port calls at a number of countries including Vietnam,The Philippines,Brunei,Australia,Indonesia,Singapore,Malaysia and Thailand.

As the flotilla returned home,the Indian navy deployed four Dornier aircraft in Singapore for four days to conduct co-ordinated reconnaissance in the strategic waters of the region that link the Pacific Ocean with the Indian.

The naval foray comes at a time when there is growing concern in the region at the assertiveness of the PLA navy and Beijing’s expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Indian Ocean

Meanwhile,the expanding Chinese maritime profile in the Western Indian Ocean is driving India to pay more attention to the region. The Chinese President Hu Jintao had visited Mozambique and The Seychelles in 2007 and Mauritius in 2009 as part of two very impressive and consequential trips to Africa.

Delhi is now stepping up its own engagement of Mozambique and the two island states that straddle across the southern SLOCs of the Indian Ocean. India already has significant naval engagement with these states.

India hosted Seychelles President James Michel earlier this month. Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna is now traveling to Mauritius and Mozambique early next month with a brief stopover in Seychelles.

Krishna’s focused trips to critical regions of interest to India — Central Asia,East Asia,and Western Indian Ocean — suggests the external affairs minister has begun to hit his stride.

raja.mohan@expressindia.com