Moscow to boost ties with Asia trip

CAMBODIA: Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was in Cambodia yesterday, India the day before, as part of Moscow's "look-east" policy aimed at countering what Russia sees as Washington's push for global dominance.

Mr Ivanov is in Phnom Penh until tomorrow, attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. He met senior Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee during his three-day visit. Russia wants to forge closer economic and security relations across a vast region extending from the oil-rich Central Asian Republics (CAR's) to south-east Asia in a move reminiscent of the Cold War years.

Russia remains a close Indian ally and its principal weapons supplier, and is reportedly attempting to revive the five-year old proposal for a Moscow-Delhi-Beijing triangle against US ascendancy to ensure a multi-polar world.

Coincidentally, Mr Ivanov's Delhi visit came a week before Mr Vajpayee leaves for China, the first Indian prime minister to travel to Beijing in a decade to cement closer political and diplomatic links between the world's two most populous countries.

Analysts said Russia's pro-active policy across Asia has coincided with America's post-Iraq plans to redeploy its forces around the world, particularly the "arc of instability" that stretches from the Central Asian Republics to North Korea.

In retaliation, a considerably weakened Russia, following the 1991 break up of the Soviet empire, is seeking to build an "alliance of stability" through subtle partnerships and by playing on latent regional fears of lone super power hegemony.

Consequently, a Russian naval task force is presently deployed for an indeterminate period in the Indian Ocean region and the surrounding seas that are fast becoming a potential confrontation zone, not only between regional powers like China, India and Pakistan, but potentially also between Russia and the US.

After extended manoeuvres with the Indian navy earlier this month, the Russian squadron of nine warships, including strategic bombers is "marking time" in the Indian Ocean at a time when the US military is firmly ensconced in Iraq, Afghanistan and the CAR's and NATO is "marching" swiftly eastwards towards Moscow.

Russian naval officers claim their Indian Ocean deployment is unconnected to the US-led military presence in Iraq and insisted that their squadron would not enter the Persian Gulf.

"This is a continuation of our old dialogue and the good relations between the Indian and Russian navies," said Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Viktor Fedorov. The exercises are not linked to the situation in Iraq, he added. But analysts disagree.

Others claimed the Russian presence in the Indian Ocean underlined the importance of "exercising control" over the Indian Ocean through which pass vital oil routes from west Asia.