India breaks silence on Myanmar, hedges its bets

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India may have broken its silence on Myanmar with a carefully nuanced call for political reform, but New Delhi has shown little sign of abandoning the military regime despite growing pressure and protests.

Officials said the Indian government felt it had to speak up and call for national reconciliation on Wednesday as Myanmar troops fired on protesters, and as the United States and Europe asked the U.N. Security Council to consider sanctions.

"It is like hedging one's bets," an Indian foreign ministry official said. "I really don't think there has been a major shift in our position.

"We probably kept quiet all this while because this regime was not faltering so far. But after yesterday, it is all up in the air. There is also the pressure of the EU-U.S. resolution."

In 1988, India was one of the staunchest supporters of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement, but a new, pragmatic approach to foreign policy saw those ties cut in the early 1990s.

Desperate to get its hands on Myanmar's gas to meet its growing energy needs, and determined to counter Chinese influence, India has instead courted Myanmar's generals.

It has also sought their help in tackling insurgent groups from India's remote northeastern states which have bases in the jungles of neighboring Myanmar.

In June, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee was quoted as saying that it was up to the people of Myanmar to struggle for democracy, as India had its own interests to defend.

Those interests were underlined this week when Petroleum Minister Murli Deora visited Myanmar, even as the protests were reaching a crescendo there, to talk about energy cooperation and witness the signing of a deep-water exploration deal.

SPARING ITS BLUSHES?

A few dozen protesters gathered in New Delhi asking Deora "don't go for gas, go for democracy", but the Indian media and political elite seemed to look the other way.

"Cat got our tongue?," leading journalist Karan Thapar wrote in the Hindustan Times on Wednesday in one of very few pieces critical of India's stance. "Indian democracy has shrunk because of its unwillingness to speak out."

But if its support for Myanmar's military regime never cost it votes at home, it was beginning to turn into an embarrassment abroad. Criticism was mounting not just from the West, but even from South East Asian nations.

Thailand's Nation newspaper said this month India's support of the regime in Myanmar was a "shame" and that it severely damaged the country's international credibility.

"India was increasingly getting isolated," added foreign policy expert C. Raja Mohan.

Hence, Wednesday's statement from Mukherjee, expressing concern, calling for dialogue, and a "broad-based process of national reconciliation and political reform".

Critics say India's furious attempts to catch up with China in courting Myanmar's generals have yielded few results.

In March, Myanmar decided to sell natural gas from two offshore fields to China, even though Indian firms had a 30 percent stake in them, an initial agreement to buy the gas, and New Delhi had offered significant sweeteners for the deal.

"Indian influence was quietly denied by the inevitability of China's international support for Myanmar," said Gideon Lundholm of the Power and Interest News Report. "China trumped India."

MISGUIDED POLICY?

Myanmar's generals did cooperate on the security front in 2004, shortly after military ruler Than Shwe visited New Delhi.

His troops closed a part of the border while India launched a major crackdown on insurgent groups in the northeast. That momentum has since faded away.

"Although we have been giving the military regime weapons and vehicles, the junta is not reciprocating in the same manner," said a senior Indian intelligence officer. "We have been pressing for a crackdown on camps inside Myanmar, but Myanmar has turned a deaf ear to us."

For some, India is not only behaving shabbily in supporting Myanmar's generals, it is being short-sighted.

"We have forgotten that lasting relationships are built between people not governments," said Thapar. "Policy is based on an assumption that there is no future outside the generals. But we are aligning with the losing side."

"Indian policy is bankrupt not just on moral grounds," agreed political analyst Sanjib Barua, saying it lacked "imagination and long-term thinking".

India has a golden opportunity to lead global efforts to help democratic forces in Myanmar instead of "trying to beat China in this game of sucking up to the generals," he said.

"That would mean India sides with the forces of Burma's future than with those of the past," he said.

"But I am afraid India's obsession with economic growth and energy security -- thought of in very technocratic ways -- is standing in the way of a more imaginative Burma policy."

(Additional reporting by Y.P. Rajesh in New Delhi and Biswajyoti Das in Guwahati)