New Delhi
7 April 2006
After differing with a democracy-loving Washington by engaging
Myanmar, Nepal and Iran, with whom New Delhi has had low-level military-to-military
contacts till very recently, India will step up her ties with another country the United
States lately has had frosty relations with when Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh
shakes hands with Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov this month.
The Prime Minister will visit Germany from April 22 to 24. In Hanover, he and German
Chancellor Angela Merkel will inaugurate the Hanover Trade Fair 2006, the world's
largest technology fair, which has India as its partner country this year. In Berlin, he will
meet with German President Kohler and Foreign Minister Steinmeier. He will fly to
Tashkent on April 25 his way back home.
Sources told this newspaper that Dr Singh's visit to Uzbekistan will be a reciprocal visit
after Mr Karimov visited New Delhi in April 2005. Both sides had signed a strategic
partnership and agreed on key areas of bilateral cooperation, including in the military
sphere. Recently, both sides concluded the meeting of the inter-governmental
commission on economic matters in New Delhi.
The sources also said an agreement on energy cooperation could be expected from Dr
Singh's visit. Uzbekistan is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO),
which also comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. India is an
observer in this regional grouping, formed in June 2001. India also has joint working
group on counter terrorism with Uzbekistan.
Dr Singh's will be one of the few high-profile visits by any premier to Uzbekistan since
May 2005 when Mr Karimov ordered a crackdown on civilians in the province of Andijan,
in a bid to quell what he termed was an Islamic rebellion. As the West sought to isolate
him, Tashkent responded by reorienting its foreign policy towards Russia and China and
ordered the closing down of US military bases.
The World Bank on March 16 announced it will not give new loans to Uzbekistan. The
chairman of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a 55-nation
group that includes Russia and the US, did not visit Uzbekistan on his recent tour of
Central Asia. However, Mr Karimov has visited South Korea, China, Kazakhstan and
Russia in a bid to end his country's isolation.
Incidentally, Prime Minister Singh's visit to Germany comes close on the heels of the
controversy surrounding the March 31 decision by a German Federal Prosecutor not to
go forward with an investigation against former Uzbek Minister of Interior Zokirjon
Almatov for the Andijan crackdown. Human Rights Watch has said it intends to challenge
the prosecutor's decision.
No comments:
Post a Comment