China's ghost hovers over naval symposium

NEWS ANALYSIS

"This is the first new and significant international cooperative construct of the 21st century," said naval chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta, kicking off the three-day Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) on Thursday in New Delhi.

Attended by 26 naval chiefs from countries bordering the Indian Ocean, China is conspicuous by its absence; the Navy points out that the Indian Ocean does not wash China's shores.

But Beijing's presence hangs over this gathering and its feelings are being carefully assuaged. The prime minister, who inaugurated IONS, and the defence minister, who spoke after him, carefully pointed out that IONS is not a military pact where a set of nations is joining forces against another.

The naval chief termed IONS, a grouping of states "that are arrayed not against one another, but against security challenges and threats that are common to all".

Despite the soothing rhetoric, India is pushing to give IONS a more tangible form. Inaugurating the seminar, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged the gathering of naval chiefs to "develop a comprehensive cooperative framework of maritime security".

On Friday and Saturday, a naval chiefs' conclave is discussing a "working charter", which India had earlier sent to the participating countries.

The draft charter sets out clear procedures for coordinated action against piracy and maritime terrorism, the security of maritime trade routes and natural disasters.

Senior naval officers admit that no substantive "joint statement" is likely anytime soon, but they expect discussions on a draft charter to give India a leadership role.

While India insists this is not a shot across China's bows, other regional powers like Australia are wary of multilateral groupings like IONS for fear of offending Beijing. Australia's new Labour government, which won power in November 2007, is committed to stronger strategic ties with India, but on a one-to-one basis rather than as a part of a strategic grouping, which China could see as threatening.

On February 5, Australia told China it was withdrawing from the Quadrilateral "" Japan, the US, India and Australia, a grouping that had drawn a demarche from China after it held joint exercises in September 2007.

Former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal, speaking at the seminar on Thursday, pointed out that serious conflicts within the region and its political and cultural diversity stood in the way of an Indian Ocean grouping. That was quickly evident when a Saudi Arabian delegate challenged an Australian speaker on his characterisation of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups.

Indonesia's delegates also made clear the country's long-standing suspicions of India's naval build-up. And Pakistan, despite an invitation to send a delegation to IONS, was represented only by High Commission officials.

Despite the difficulties, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is strongly backing the IONS initiative. Officials from the PMO point out the need to break away from the traditional "Delhi-centric" view of security, which has traditionally focused on the China and Pakistan land threats.

Over the years, the Indian Ocean region has been too weak, divided and insecure to launch any multilateral security initiatives. Instead, smaller multilateral economic initiatives like Asean, Saarc and BIMST-EC have proved far less contentious.

The only functional security grouping, the ASEAN Regional Forum, has required the presence of major extra-regional powers, like the US, to become stable. To that extent, IONS is an ambitious new initiative in the Indian Ocean.