Bilateral complications at multilateral summits
MULTILATERAL summits make for strange bedfellows. Theoretically, these are platforms where countries set aside differences to unite on pushing a common agenda. It is, therefore, possible that you have Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which have an unresolved border dispute — the most recent manifestation of which took a hundred lives last September — attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers’ conclave in Goa with an air of cordiality. No distinction, let’s say, between the state sponsor of terror and the victim.
In a somewhat similar manner, not only did Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang meet bilaterally ‘on the sidelines’, as it is elegantly called, but Jaishankar also had the privilege of being told that the border situation between India and China was ‘generally stable’ and that both sides should draw lessons from history. Translated from diplomatese to English, it means that the Chinese are okay with the situation they have engineered and that’s the way they would have it remain since the People’s Liberation Army has done some widespread and indiscreet military squatting along the border areas, which we regard as legitimate Indian territory. But such SCO meets serve to clear the air, it needs to be acknowledged.
True, Jaishankar says that the situation insofar as China is concerned is abnormal. It is more like a three-ring circus, really, each simultaneously being an absorbing centre stage and entertaining sideshow. It confuses the spectator, however. Consider this wrinkle: The joint communiqué following the 21st meeting of the SCO Heads of Government (Prime Ministers) Council at Samarkand says: “Reaffirming their support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan noted the ongoing joint activities to implement this project, including the efforts to couple the construction of the Eurasian Economic Union and the BRI.”
India strenuously, if ineffectually, opposes the BRI because it passes through land wrested by Pakistan and some of it gifted outright to China. Yet, you have a bilateral with China but not with Pakistan, which, anachronistically and perversely, it appears, refuses to let go of the ghost of the Simla Agreement, which calls for a bilateral solution and for neither party to change the situation on the ground unilaterally and enjoins for some mysterious reason that “both shall prevent the organisation, assistance or encouragement of any acts detrimental to the maintenance of peace and harmonious relations.”
The problem, of course, must lie with Pakistan’s hitherto unblooded Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who has left India with a dark promise that sounds vaguely like a terrorist or, worse, a nuclear threat: “Waqt pe aise jawab denge jo yaad rahega.” Pakistan is a past master at bilateral antics. Bilawal described Prime Minister Modi as the ‘butcher of Gujarat’ at the United Nations, where Pakistan and India annually trade sophomoric insults over, usually, Kashmir. Sometimes called by fellow Pakistanis of some repute both an ‘imported foreign minister’ and an ‘intern’, Bilawal is the baby of the lot compared to, say, Sergey Lavrov. Lavrov has held that job for 20 years. He walked stylishly away from Goa, with not a squeak emerging on Ukraine.
Which raises the question — given China’s consistently demonstrated land-grabbing mindset that has led to a loss of possibly scores of precious Indian lives, both at Galwan and other places, how is having a bilateral with Pakistan more reprehensible in terms of optics? So far as the average Indian is concerned, the difference between Chinese and Pakistani approaches to India is not like chalk and cheese but like cheese and cheese: you can smile at summits and yet be a villain. Abnormal is abnormal, whether it applies to Pakistan or China.
After all, the purpose of this summit was largely preparatory. Its aim was to set the stage for the success of the Heads of State summit in New Delhi, scheduled to be held in about two months. Putin, surely, can safely come to India, which last December witnessed the mysterious deaths of three Russian dissidents/oligarchs in Rayagada, Odisha; they appeared to have leapt, lemming-like, to their deaths from the high floors of the hotel they were staying in. Since the Ukraine war began, there have been over two dozen mysterious deaths of Putin critics who did not have the stomach for the war in Ukraine.
The reason that Putin can come to India safely is rather more innocuous. Ever since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him on March 17 for the alleged war crime of unlawfully deporting and transferring children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, the 123 signatories to the Rome Statute (the UN treaty pertaining to the ICC) are obliged to arrest Putin on arrival. Thankfully for Putin, India is not a signatory.
Curiously enough, by the ICC count, Afghanistan, which is an SCO observer and could soon become a member, is off limits for Putin, as will be Mongolia. But Putin can take heart from the fact that though Mongolia has been quietly watching SCO proceedings as an observer for the past almost two decades, it has shown no inclination to join the grouping.
Putin can also take heart from the assurances furnished, according to the Washington Post (April 29), by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval to his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev on February 22 that the war in Ukraine will not come up in any G20 meet (India currently chairs the grouping and a summit is due this September).
What applies to G20 surely applies to the SCO, which, it deserves mention, will soon transact business in English, for the convenience of the burgeoning membership. It’s an Indian initiative. In turn, it gives hope to the belief that we may understand better in Indian English the backside of these grandiose goings-on.
