US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stopped over in India this week as part of the last leg of her Asian tour that began in China. Surprisingly, the major agenda for her visit wasn’t Pakistan or terrorism. Rather, it was to persuade India to reduce its oil imports from Iran and contribute to the sanctions imposed against that country by the US and Europe.
India’s response to the US’ arm-bending over the issue has hardly been coherent. While External Affairs Minister SM Krishna pointed out to Clinton that the extent of oil imports from Iran would be dictated foremost by national interests, import data released almost parallely told a different story. Indeed, there has been a 34% fall in oil imports from Iran in April compared to March. A large part of this decrease is due to state-run oil companies Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) not importing any Iranian oil last month. If India is indeed standing up to the US stance on Iran, the evidence isn’t very apparent as of now.
The reason for this may be that the Indian administration isn’t willing to appear as if it is buckling under US pressure to act against an old ally. Instead, there have been discreet efforts to meet the US’ expectations while publicly portraying a neutral stance. And the efforts in this regard have hardly gone unnoticed. At a press conference in New Delhi, Mrs.Clinton said “We commend India for the steps its refineries are taking to reduce its dependence on imports from Iran… There’s no doubt that India and the United States are after the same goal (of preventing a nuclear Iran).”
However, it is true that India has been using the sanctions imposed on Iran to improve its own trade balance with that nation. Continue reading
carvaan 