MOSCOW, June 9: Brajesh Mishra, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, is expected to meet Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov tomorrow and apprise him of the new strategic situation in South Asia in the aftermath of India's nuclear tests. Primakov is returning to Moscow tonight from Germany where he accompanied Russian President Boris Yeltsin.Mishra held talks today with Russian officials. But both Indian and Russian officials remained tight-lipped, declining to divulge details about the purpose of his visit to Moscow.
This is the first senior-level face-to-face interaction between Delhi and Moscow, since India completed a series of nuclear tests last month, provoking unanimous condemnation from the P-5 and the 15-member UN Security Council.
Indian ambassador to Moscow Ronen Sen has routinely been in touch with the Russian Foreign Ministry's officials after the tests. But Russia being a strategic partner, it was felt necessary in Delhi to strengthen the interaction betweenthe two countries at the next higher levels.
That Vajpayee wrote twice to Yeltsin and spoke three times to him on the hotline after Pokharan II, showed how much India was concerned about Kremlin's stance to the global nuclear regime vis-a-vis India and also to the sensitive issue of Kashmir.
Although Russia has opposed the US-led sanctions against India and the "strong language" on Kashmir at the meeting of P-5 Foreign Ministers in Geneva, the Kremlin is reported to be under great pressure from the Americans to persuade its old ally India to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
During his telephonic conversation with Vajpayee last Saturday, Yeltsin reportedly expressed serious concern about nuclear tests by India and Pakistan and called on Delhi to sign the NPT.
He also made it clear to Vajpayee that the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, went far beyond regional boundaries, creating an extremely dangerous precedent for the spread of nuclear weapons in South Asia.
"Too much must not beread in Yeltsin's call to India to sign the NPT", said one anonymous Russian official.
"India has had its differences with Russia on NPT and Russia too had shown understanding in the past to Indian view about not joining the NPT", he noted.
During his meeting with Mishra, Primakov is expected to reiterate Russia's position that the Kashmir row should be solved in the framework of the Shimla agreement.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
