Moscow's arms sales to New Delhi to continue

Moscow's arms sales to New Delhi to continue

By Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW: India is and will remain Moscow's principal strategic
partner in the Asia-Pacific region -- and its principal business
partner in the regional arms trade.

In Moscow for meetings with Russian president Boris Yeltsin
and his premier Viktor Chernomyrdin, Tuesday, Indian prime
minister HD Deve Gowda underlined the mutual advantages to be
found in deals that made New Delhi the world's biggest buyer of
Russian weaponry.

Russia's arms industry, perhaps the only one of the country's
trades to start the process of free market reform with both
quality product and hard-sell mentality, has moved on up to take
second place only to the United States in the global weapons
sales market.

In the meantime, India is on an arms buying spree; it plans to
hike defense spending by 21 percent to US$10.2 billion between
April 1997-March 1998, despite howls of protest from the
country's cash-strapped treasury.

Since Russia, which still sells armaments to 51 different
countries, made or designed most of India's tanks and artillery
in the former Soviet Union, it is the obvious source for new
hardware.

India is paying $1.8 billion for 40 multi-purpose Sukhoi Su-30
MK jet fighters, with the first eight delivered this month. It
has also agreed to buy submarines worth $800 million and is now
angling for a $1 billion Russian anti-missile system.

New Delhi officials have said that a draft agreement would
soon be made on the buying of six or seven air defense systems
with a view to building more systems under license by India's
struggling state-run ordnance factories.

The Russian S-300 systems, each one deploying 48 missiles, are
supposed to be an improved version of the U.S. made Patriot
missile system deployed during the 1992 Gulf War to shoot down
Iraq's incoming Russian-made Scud missiles.

Russian experts say that unlike the Patriot, the S-300 will
destroy the warhead as well as the missile and would be equally
effective against aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic
missiles.

Its homing system, based on satellite communications, has
earned it the nickname 'The Third World's Star Wars' -- a
reference to the failed 1980s space defense program started by
former U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

India's existing Russian made SAM-3 missile systems are good
against jet planes only, and New Delhi has long sought a system
that will give it an edge over its missile armed regional rival,
Pakistan, as well as some insurance against China and its long-
range Silkworm cruise missiles.

Threats from Pakistan drive the race. Talks are also on to
upgrade the SAM-3s and its existing batteries of Russian-made
Prechora missiles in the wake of Pakistan's reported plans to buy
Chinese M-11 tactical missiles. India says it bought the Su-30
MKs specifically to counter the 'threat' from Pakistan's
squadrons of U.S. made F-16s and French Mirage 2000s.

Another six Su-30 MKs are expected to be delivered by April 7,
and all will be operational by the year 2000, according to the
Russian news agency Interfax. It reports that Russia's Zhukovsky
air academy and the Sukhoi design bureau have already trained 15
Indian pilots and 40 engineers to run the Su-30s.

India has fought three wars with Pakistan since the sub-
continent's independence from British rule in 1947 and one short
but bitter border war with China in 1962. (Chinese foreign
minister Qian Qichen also met Yeltsin in Moscow last Thursday.)

Accordingly Gowda's visit to Moscow was always expected to
touch upon the issue of arms sales to Pakistan by Russia and
other former Soviet CIS countries. Russia itself sold 12 Mi-17
attack helicopters to Pakistan a few years ago and several T-85
Russian tanks have also reportedly ended up in Islamabad's care,
allegedly via China.

But essentially this means Ukraine, which inherited nearly a
third of the old Soviet Union's armaments plants when the old
bloc broke up. A four-year Kiev-Islamabad deal worth almost $650
million to ship the latest version of the T-80 main battle tank,
the T-80 UD, to the Pakistan army has upset both India and
Russia.

Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Davydov has even refused Ukraine a
license to export key parts for the tank's weapons' system still
made in Russia. He commented tartly that "Russia is not going to
assist the building up of Pakistan's military potential to the
detriment of India, Russia's strategic partner".

"Within the framework of its new, ever more aggressive
marketing policy (Russia's main arms manufacturer) Rosvooruzhenie
will try to do everything to chase away the weaker competitors,
those who sell arms to anyone without considering the political
implications," said the Moscow daily Segodnya.

The daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta speculated grimly that the T-80
UDs could one day find their way into the hands of the Afghan
warlords and from there to Tajikistan, "the latest hotbed of
guerrilla warfare on Russia's borders".

"Most likely, he (Davydov) had in mind not a direct threat to
the southern borders of Russia," said Dmitry Mosyakov, a South
Asia expert with the Russian Academy of Sciences' Oriental Studies
Institute, "but the intention to prevent the buttressing of
Pakistan's military potential.

"Pakistan is both a longstanding foe of India and the
principal strategic partner of Russia since Soviet times."

"It is no wonder Ukraine is desperate to see the Pakistani
deal through, for the issue is the race between former Soviet
republics for the lucrative weapons' market in the developing
world," Gleri Shirokov, the Institute's deputy director told IPS.
"The trade is worth billions of dollars, which the battered
economies of both Ukraine and Russia desperately
need."

-- IPS