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NAWAZ SHARIF'S VISIT TO
MOSCOW
Pakistan Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif's announced visit to Moscow from April 19 to 21,1999, would be the
first by a Pakistani Prime Minister to Moscow since the late Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto visited
Moscow in 1976.
Pakistan's aligning
itself with the US and other Western powers in assisting the Afghan Mujahideen in their
fight against the Soviet and the Afghan Government's troops during the 1980s caused a
set-back to the efforts initiated by Z.A.Bhutto in 1976 to correct the imbalances in
Pakistan's relations with the US on the one side and the erstwhile USSR on the other.
The role played by
Pakistan after 1988 in ensuring that the withdrawing Soviet troops were not harassed by
the Afghan Mujahideen and in facilitating contacts between the authorities of Moscow and
the Mujahideen groups for negotiating the release of some Russian Air Force personnel and
others held prisoner by the Mujahideen led to some improvement in the relations, but after
the formation of the Russian Federation following the collapse of the USSR in 1991 there
was a fresh spell of cooling-off in the relations due to the following reasons:
- The primacy given by the Russian Government under President Boris
Yeltsin to its strategic partnership and military supply
relationship with India. The invoking of the Pressler Amendment by the US Bush
Administration in 1990 led to a ban not only on the supply of
new military equipment to Pakistan, but also spare parts and
maintenance, repair and upgradation facilities for the US equipment sold or
supplied to Pakistan before 1990. Apart from the purchase of the Agosta class
submarines and re-conditioned old Mirage 5 fighters from France, Pakistan could not
succeed in finding alternate sources of supply in the West
partly due to the cash crunch and partly due to the fact that even equipment, particularly
for the Air Force, manufactured by other Western countries such as Sweden had components
such as the engines etc sourced from the US and their sale to Pakistan by those countries
also attracted the ban under the Pressler Amendment. In its anxiety not to dilute the
primacy of its relationship with India, Russia not only spurned Pakistani approaches for
the the purchase of Russian equipment, but also tried to
create difficulties in theway of other former components of the USSR like Ukraine selling
items such as 300 tanks to Pakistan.
- While the primacy given by Moscow to its relationship with India
was an important factor in its rejection of Pakistani indications of interest in the
purchase of Russian equipment, there were other factors too such as Pakistan's payment difficulties and serious doubts in the Russian mind about the
sincerity of Pakistan's interest. Russian officials
suspected that the Pakistani military, particularly the Air
Force, continued to covet US equipment and that Pakistan's repeated
expressions of interest in Russian equipment were really meant to cause concern in the US
that if it did not dilute, if not remove the Pressler Amendment, it might drive Pakistan
into the hands of the Russian military industry and lose
whatever influence it still had in the Pakistani armed forces.
- The role of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan in
the creation of the Taliban and in assisting it in capturing
power in Kabul and in subsequently extending its control to over 90 per cent of the Afghan
territory and the equally active role of ISI-supported religious extremist
organisations such as the Markaz Dawa Al Irshad and the
Lashkar-e-Toiba, its militant wing, the Harkat- Ul-Mujahideen
(HUM) and the Tablighi Jamaat in assisting anti-establishment and
Anti-Moscow religious extremist elements in their violent activities in Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan and Chechnya. Moscow has repeatedly expressed strongly its concerns over the
lionisation of extremist leaders from Chechnya in Pakistan and over their training
in camps in Pakistani and Taliban-controlled Afghan
territories. In the early 1990s, during the second tenure of Benazir Bhutto as the Prime
Minister, the ISI and these religious extremist organisations had
clandestinely trained Bosnian Muslim groups, with the knowledge of the US, for fighting against the Serbs. The present Nawaz Sharif Government
has extended similar clandestine assistance to the Muslims of
the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in their fight against
Belgrade. Russian officials suspect that despite Pakistan's unhappiness at Washington over
the invoking of the Pressler Amendment, it is letting itself
be used by the US as its cat's paw to bring about the
disintegration of Yugoslavia and fear that the US is similarly using Pakistan to create
disaffection against Moscow in the Muslim population of Chechnya
and other places in Russia. The alarm created in the Central Asian Republics over the
future plans of the Taliban is also shared by Moscow.
- Moscow's unhappiness over the ineffectiveness of Pakistan's
narcotics control authorities in preventing the increasing
smuggling of narcotics to Russia from Pakistan through the
Central Asian Republics.
Despite these
inhibiting factors, tentative steps to improve the bilateral relations were initiated even
under Benazir Bhutto in the form of a liaison relationship between the ISI and the Russian
intelligence to share counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics intelligence and to reassure
Moscow of Pakistan's goodwill. After Nawaz Sharif returned to power in February, 1997,
this process has been continued with periodic consultations between the Afghan experts of
the two Foreign Offices to exchange notes on the situation in Afghanistan. Pakistan has
also been closely promoting the association of Moscow in the search for a political
solution in Afghanistan.
After the visit of
Gohar Ayub Khan, the then Foreign Minister, to Moscow in July, 1997, there has been an
attempt to promote bilateral trade too, the total value of which is presently limited to a
meagre US $ 50 million. Pakistan has also been trying to sort out the difficulties
which have delayed by over two years the launch of Badr II, the meteorological satellite
of Pakistan's Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), by a Russian
rocket.
Since the middle of
last year, there has been a debate in the Foreign Offices of the two countries over the
advisability of closer co-operation between the two countries despite the above-mentioned
inhibiting factors. The debate in Pakistan has been intensified by the failure of Nawaz
Sharif's visit to the US in December,1998, to persuade the Clinton Administration to
remove the ban on the sale of new military equipment and spare parts to Pakistan.
It would appear
that in the Russian Foreign Office too a section of officials has been saying that while
Russia should not allow the primacy of its relationship with India to be diluted, at the
same time, it should not allow this to come in the way of its improving its relations with
Pakistan. They reportedly feel that while Russia need not sell military equipment to
Pakistan, it should not come in the way of former constituent units of the USSR such as
Ukraine and Belarus selling equipment to Pakistan. Apparently under the influence of these
officials, Moscow has quietly allowed Ukraine to go ahead with the implementation of its
contract for the sale of tanks to Pakistan and Belarus offered to sell tanks and aircraft
to Pakistan during the visit to Pakistan in November, 1998, by Vasily Borisovich
Dolgoliov, the Deputy Prime minister of Belarus.
An indication of
the new Russian thinking was given by Andrei Mikhailovich Gulyaev, the Russian
Ambassador to Pakistan, in an interview to the Pakistani daily "The News", on
December 18,1998. He said:
"The
process of laying a solid groundwork for future interaction between Russia and Pakistan
needs consistent efforts and, if this is maintained, it should culminate in a
Russian-Pakistani summit, at which, a historic document, the first ever political treaty
on co-operation and the principles of relations between the two countries will be signed.
"Several
meetings have suggested that the two countries are interested in making our relations more
dynamic and full-fledged.
"Russia
attaches considerable significance to Pakistan playing its independent role in the general
structure of international relations, specially in South and South-West Asia. With the
world moving towards multi-polarity, the importance of Pakistan in regional co-operation
for peace and stability is valued by Russia and we share many stances in the UN.
"Our relations
with India are very dynamic. India, unlike Pakistan, was never a party to any anti-Soviet
military pact. Foreign spy planes did not fly from Indian territory. But we are also for
strong relations with Pakistan.
"Pakistan had
never made an official request for planes from Russia nor had Moscow shown any reluctance
to sell planes in the face of threats from India.
"Our military
co-operation does not depend on any country, but it is a delicate matter because it is
linked with foreign relations.…We are guided only by our own national interests and
international obligations.
"The current
turnover in bilateral trade is unsatisfactory and there are several serious proposals to
reopen the Pakistani market to Russian machinery and engineering products, utilise the
accumulated experience in upgrading the Karachi steel mill and power plant projects and,
currently, both sides are negotiating a deal for Kamaz trucks. The draft of a new trade
and economic co-operation agreement and several other important documents are being
finalised. Our collaboration can be quite wide in major spheres of the economy such as
metallurgy, power generation, oil and gas, transport, irrigation and peaceful research of
outer space."
B.RAMAN
15-4-99
(The writer is Additional Secretary (Retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and currently Director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com )
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