Putin tactful on India's UN role

Strategic ties to be strengthened

A joint declaration emphasising strategic partnership between India and Russia in the light of the changing global environment in the recent past and a four-month period to draft an agreement to protect Intellectual Property Rights in the supply of defence equipment were among the papers signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin today.

This paved the way for further joint development of weapons after the initial experiment with the Brahmos missile system.

However, Putin said he was not for any new member of the United Nations Security Council acquiring the veto power for that would reduce the Council to a "talking shop" and erode its basic character.

The two countries also signed accords on outer-space, long-term cooperation in the field of joint development and use of Russian global navigational satellite system for peaceful purposes, visa-free travel for holders of diplomatic and official passports and cooperation between the cities of Mumbai and St Petersburg.

At the joint press conference, Singh said: "We have agreed that this matter (IPR) should be resolved in the next four months beginning January. The IPR rights will be respected with regard to all future supplies of equipment." Existing agreements would run through their course, he added.

Putin said only one technical issue remained to be sorted out and he was confident that it would be done in the next three-four months.

Singh also announced that India would honour the assurance given by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that Russia would be treated as a market economy, which mainly impacts on anti-dumping probes.

India supports Russia's early entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the Prime Minister hoped that there would be early conclusion of bilateral negotiations on this subject.

In his opening remarks, Singh said their discussions covered joint cooperative ventures in many areas and the problem of supplies of defence spares had been resolved.

Noting that the economic cooperation between the two countries was much below expectations, Singh said the joint committee, which looks into the matter had gone into it with a sense of urgency.

Singh said they discussed energy cooperation and also peaceful cooperation in nuclear energy, which means four more reactors for the Kudankulam nuclear power plant were discussed but no breakthrough could be reported.

Singh said the political discussions covered the Indian neighbourhood including Afghanistan and Iraq. "In all these matters there were close similarity of views", he said.

However, there was a minor setback as Putin today fully supported India's entry into the UN Security Council as a permanent member but was not in fa-vour of veto rights to new members.

"But speaking about the role of veto and other tools present in the UN, we should say we believe it would be absolutely unacceptable to erode such tools of the UN," he said.

"Otherwise, the UN organisation will lose its weight and lose its role changing into some discussion club, some new edition of the League of Nations," he said. He was asked whether Russia would like India to have veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council.

Favouring re-organisation of the UN, including the enlargement of the number of permanent members of the Security Council, Putin said: "India is our strategic privileged partner. And spea-king from the point of view of geographical representation, India is number one."

He said in the process of negotiations, "we show significant flexibility. We have full understanding, mutual understanding with our Indian partners in this matter".

The Russian leader said: "Our position is in preserving UN's universal character and serving as a tool for the resolution of all the problems of the modern world."