Indian Intimacy
with Saddam
By Dr Shireen M Mazari
Recent revelations regarding
former Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh’s
linkage to the UN oil-for-food programscandal should
not have come as a surprise to anyone who knew of
the long history of close cooperation between India
and the Saddam regime, especially between the Iraqi
Ba’ath Party and the Indian Congress Party.
This relationship had a strong strategic dimension
to it that the US would do well to recall as it
goes into a strategic partnership with India which
includes a nuclear dimension.
The India-Iraq relationship also had a nuclear component
going back to the first Indian nuclear test in 1974,
as highlighted in a document of the Washington,
DC-based Institute for Science and International
Security (ISIS). It was in 1974 that Saddam flew
into India specifically to sign a nuclear cooperation
agreement with the Indira Gandhi government. This
agreement included exchange of scientists, training
and technology transfers. Iraqi scientists were
working in India’s fuel reprocessing laboratories
when India separated plutonium for its first nuclear
explosive device. Later, those same Iraqi scientists
were in charge of the nuclear fuel reprocessing
unit supplied to Iraq by the Italian company, CNEN.
This was followed by an Indian scientist spending
a year at the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission’s
computer center, training Iraqis in the use of nuclear
computer codes.
So it was hardly surprising to find Iraq supporting
India’s nuclear tests. The Ba’ath Party’s
newspaper, Al-Thawra, declared: “We cannot
see how anyone can ask India not to develop nuclear
weapons and its long-range missiles at a time [when]
it is like any other big state with its human and
scientific potential” (ISIS brief, May 28,
1998). Also, in May 1998, a Baghdad weekly, owned
by Saddam Hussein’s eldest son Uday, announced
that India had agreed to enroll several groups of
Iraqi engineers “in advanced technological
courses” scheduled for mid-July. The field
of training was left unspecified.
An Indian company, NEC Engineers Private Ltd, is
believed to have helped Iraq acquire equipment and
materials “capable of being used for the production
of chemicals for mass destruction,” according
to a CNN report of January 26, 2003. The company
also sent technical personnel to Iraq, including
to the Fallujah II chemical plant. Between 1998
and 2001, NEC Engineers Private Ltd shipped 10 consignments
of highly sensitive equipment, including titanium
vessels and centrifugal pumps to Iraq.
Nor was Iraq-India cooperation limited to the hi-tech
and nuclear fields. Before the Gulf War of 1990-91,
Iraq was one of the major sources of India’s
oil imports and one of the biggest markets for India’s
project exports, mostly in the construction sector.
With the onset of the Gulf War in 1990-91, and the
imposition of UN sanctions, India’s trade
with Iraq suffered seriously. That is why India
opposed the sanctions regime. As late as September
2000, India’s then minister of state for external
affairs, Ajit Kumar Panja, visited Iraq. In his
meeting with Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yasin Ramadhan,
he said, “India has been and is against any
sanctions and we tried to convince all bilaterally
and multilaterally, even at UN forums, that sanctions
against Iraq must be lifted.”
On the sidelines of the 1998 NAM Summit in Durban,
South Africa, a meeting between India’s prime
minister at that time, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and
the then Iraqi vice-president, expanded Indo-Iraqi
cooperation with the setting up of a joint business
council. In November 2000, Iraqi Vice-President
Taha Ramadhan visited India, the highest Iraqi dignitary
to travel to India in 25 years.
The Indian media consistently played up the intimacy
of the Saddam regime with India and the consistency
of the support provided by Saddam for Indian positions.
Under a Times of India headline of July 7, 2002,
‘Iraq conveys support to India on J&K
issue’, it was reported that Saddam Hussein
had “conveyed his principled and unwavering
support to India on the Kashmir issue and said Iraq
greatly values its relationship with New Delhi.”
Saddam conveyed his views to the visiting Indian
petroleum minister, Ram Naik, and declared that
“friendship with India had been a source of
strength not only to Iraq but to the Arab world.”
Two days later (July 9, 2002), the Times of India
carried another story titled ‘Iraq prizes
ties with India: Saddam Hussein’, in which
Saddam stated that “We are ready to cooperate
with India, and we say this not because we are under
siege but within a strategic vision of the region
and the world; most importantly, within the framework
of India’s relations with Arabs.” During
this visit by Ram Naik to Iraq in July 2002, Iraq
and India signed an agreement to boost trade ties,
especially in the oil sector. During the visit,
the Iraqi oil minister, Amir Muhammed Rasheed, described
India as a “strategic partner”. By July
2002, bilateral trade between Baghdad and New Delhi
under the ‘oil-for-food’ program had
reached $1.1bn. So an Indian connection in the scandal
related to this program was almost a given.
It is believed that talks on oil vouchers probably
took place when the then Iraqi vice-president visited
India in 2000. According to India Today (December
12, 2005), Singh managed to get an invitation in
his name and then got clearance for a four-member
Congress delegation to visit Iraq from January 17-24,
2001. Singh then added his son and his business
partner, Andaleeb Sehgal, to the official delegation.
Apparently, it was on this trip that the deal was
sealed and four million barrels of oil were allocated
by the Saddam regime to Singh and four million to
the Congress.
Nor did India develop close strategic links only
with Iraq, once again during a Congress government.
Following a visit to Iran by Indira Gandhi in April
1974, in which agreements were reached on a number
of cooperative ventures including in the technological
field, India went on to sign a formal nuclear cooperation
agreement with Iran in February 1975 -- similar
to the one signed with Iraq a few years earlier.
The Iran-India nuclear connection in terms of scientist
and technology exchanges has been listed in these
columns earlier. But clearly in the seventies and
eighties, the Indian state saw nothing wrong with
playing a proliferator role in the nuclear field.
The energy issue has also been critical in Indian
considerations, and continues to be so. That Iraq
and Iran are major energy suppliers was certainly
a crucial consideration for India in its nuclear
cooperation with these two countries. Now India
is also wooing the Saudi Kingdom and King Abdullah
is to be the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations
in New Delhi in January 2006. Of course, the Muslim
angle is also a factor as close links with Muslim
states plays well with India’s Muslim population.
The question is whether the US and other western
powers are either oblivious to this role or have
deliberately chosen to ignore the Saddam-India connections
that continue to surface. As the US moves effectively
towards undermining the NPT and recognizing India
as a nuclear weapons power, the answer to this question
will clarify the proliferation issue for the Pakistani
state and civil society.
(The writer is director general of the Institute
of Strategic Studies in Islamabad. Courtesy The
News)
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