Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s much-anticipated visit to Iran this year can be expected to serve the dual purpose of maintaining India’s ties with Iran on an even keel and kick-starting peace talks with Pakistan.
Tehran will host the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in September. His visit to the Iranian capital will, literally, be couched in non alignment, coming as it will in the midst of a brewing crisis in West Asia, between Iran and Israel, and between the Shiite and Sunni blocs represented by Iran and Saudi Arabia, respectively.
It will follow the visits by external affairs minister S.M. Krishna to Israel, and defence minister A.K. Antony to Saudi Arabia. Also, it will be the first visit by an Indian Premier to Iran in over a decade, after Atal Behari Vajpayee’s in 2001.
Prime Minister Singh’s proposed visit to Tehran is being described as a manifestation of India’s balanced and equitable relationships with various protagonists in the region. A broad-based relationship with the region is a welcome shift in policy, particularly after the narrow-minded pursuit of interests in the run-up to the signing of the India-US nuclear deal.
India and Pakistan are among the 120 members of the NAM. Besides interacting with the host, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Prime Minister Singh is likely to re-engage his Pakistan counterpart, Yousaf Raza Gilani, on the margins of the summit.
The Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan last met in November 2011 on the sidelines of the Saarc summit in the Maldives. Incidentally, it was on the margins of the last NAM summit, hosted by Egypt in the Red Sea resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh in 2009, that Prime Ministers Singh and Gilani agreed to insulate the peace talks from 'action on terrorism'.
Prime Minister Singh will be hoping that peace with Pakistan will be his legacy, as India heads for elections in 2014.