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