Official Spokesperson (Shri Syed Akbaruddin): Good morning friends and thank you very much for being here this Saturday morning.
As you know, this briefing is about the forthcoming visit of Vice-President to Tajikistan. Vice-President will be visiting Tajikistan from 14th to 17th of this month. India and Tajikistan have been having very high-level visits on a regular basis. For those of you who perhaps may not be aware, President Rahmon has visited India five times. From our side, the last visit was by President Pratibha Patil, and prior to that it was Prime Minister Vajpayee.
I have here with me Joint Secretary (Eurasia), Mr. Ajay Bisaria, who will brief you on the visit of the Vice-President. What we will do is follow the usual procedure and that is I will ask Mr. Bisaria to make his opening remarks which will provide you a broad picture of the visit, following which we will be open to any questions that you would like to ask on the Vice-President’s visit. Subsequent to that, if any of you may have one or two questions on anything else we will be willing to answer them.
Without much ado I will ask Joint Secretary Bisaria to make his opening remarks.
Joint Secretary (Eurasia) (Shri Ajay Bisaria):Good morning.
I think when we talk about this part of the world, Central Asia, it is always useful to have some maps. So, I am going to put on the screen a couple of maps for you to see what we are talking about.
As Akbar said, the Vice-President of India, Shri Hamid Ansari, will be on an official visit to Tajikistan from 14th to 17thof April. This will be the first ever visit by any Vice-President of India to Tajikistan. During his visit the Vice-President is expected to meet with His Excellency Mr. Emamolii Rahmon who is the President of Tajikistan. He will also hold talks with the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Minister of Economic Development and Trade, and the Defence Minister of Tajikistan, apart from meeting the Chairman of the Majlis-e-Milli, which is the Upper House of the Parliament of Tajikistan.
The Vice-President is also expected to visit the Tajik Technical University where India set up an India-Tajikistan modern engineering workshop which was inaugurated in 2011. He is also expected to visit a city called Nurek in the Khatlon Province in Southern Tajikistan.
The Vice-President will be accompanied by Mrs. Ansari, and a high-level delegation comprising: Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Shri Tariq Anwar; Dr. M.S. Gill, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha; Shri G.N. Ratanpuri, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha; Shrimati Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha; and Shri Chandan Mitra, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.
Let us just get to the next map. What I am going to do is just talk of some background of the bilateral relationship to give a context to the visit. Relations between India and Tajikistan have been very close and cordial in the two decades of Tajikistan’s Independence. Exchange of visits at higher levels has served to cement bilateral ties. As Akbar mentioned, Prime Minister Vajpayee had visited in 2003; President Pratibha Devi Singh Patil paid a state visit in September 2009; and of course President Rahmon has been a regular visitor to India. He has visited five times in 1995, 1999, 2001, 2006 and most recently in September 2012.
During his last visit, India and Tajikistan elevated their relationship to the level of a strategic partnership encompassing cooperation in a very wide spectrum of areas. We signed bilateral documents in many areas including textiles, culture, education, sport, health and labour, apart from agreements with private Indian companies.
During the visit India announced several new development projects in Tajikistan including an IT Centre of Excellence, a Pan-Central Asia E-Network which would include tele-education and tele-medicine delivery in the region, medical centres, language laboratories, an Entrepreneurship Development Institute and various small development projects.
Tajikistan, as you would see from the map, has immense geostrategic significance. It has borders with China of over 520 kilometres which were recently settled. It has a border with Afghanistan of 1425 kilometres. This is a very porous border and adds to the geostrategic significance of the region. The Afghan Wakhan Corridor, which you see a little sliver of in blue, is at its narrowest point 16 kilometres, which would mean that the distance between Tajikistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir is just that much, 16 kilometres.
India has strong civilisational ties with Tajikistan. We have linguistic similarities, similarities in customs, food, music, arts. These roots stretch into the depths of history from ancient times, even before the Kushana period in the first century AD. These ancient links have now a strong resonance, we are proud to say, in our modern ties with Tajikistan.
In terms of the bilateral relationship, we have several very strong consultative mechanisms which have been reinforced by high-level visits. We have foreign office consultations, a joint working group on counterterrorism, we have a joint commission meeting regularly on trade and economic, scientific cooperation. And we also have a working group on defence cooperation.
In keeping with the very close bilateral relations, we have responded several times to humanitarian crises in Tajikistan. India’s project assistance in the form of grants has also been significant. In 1995 for the first time India extended a credit line of five million dollars to Tajikistan to establish a joint venture with a private Indian company in the pharma sector. This and the accrued interest were converted into a grant later.
Similarly in 2003, India helped set up a food-processing plant in Dushanbe which was commissioned in 2005. And we provided a grant in 2003 for setting up an IT Centre in Dushanbe which was inaugurated in 2006, started functioning in the name of the Bedil India Tajikistan Centre for IT. This has been a very successful model which is why it is being replicated now. During the state visit of President Rahmon in 2006 we committed to undertake the rehabilitation and modernisation of a 1936 vintage Varzob hydropower station. This has recently been completed in December 2012 and inaugurated. So, it is a very strong development partnership that India has with Tajikistan.
Apart from that, we have very strong and close defence relations. India has played a major role in development of infrastructure at the Gissar military aerodrome which was inaugurated by President Rahmon himself in October 2010. India is also training a large number of Tajik officers and cadets both within Tajikistan as well as by sending them to various military courses in India including the NDA and the IMA.
The level of trade between our countries is low for one very obvious reason which is the transportation difficulties and access to this landlocked country. The usual route or the most popular route right now for transportation of goods from India is by sea to Bandar Abbas in Iran and from Bandar Abbas by land. This is time-consuming and costly. And of late, for those who are following the region, we have taken several initiatives to reenergize the north-south transport corridor, and we are also talking of trans-Afghan corridors which give us special access to Tajikistan.
In terms of trade for 2012, trade figures from Tajikistan say it was 27 million dollars, extremely low, mainly Indian export of meats and meat products and pharmaceuticals, iron and steel, apparel and clothing accessories. We had the seventh session of the Joint Commission which has laid a blueprint for trying to improve this level of trade that met in February 2013 and identified a series of measures to accelerate our economic relations.
Apart from the development partnership, India has also contributed to capacity building in Tajikistan in a very strong way. The ITEC programme is extremely popular. During the visit of President Rahmon the number of seats was increased from 100 to 150, and there continues to be a strong demand particularly for courses in information technology, diplomacy, banking, etc.
One happy development for Tajikistan has been that it has joined the WTO in December 2012, and we hope that will give an impetus to bilateral trade as well as Tajikistan’s integration into the global economy.
Of course, India and Tajikistan have coordinated closely in UN bodies and international organizations as well.
Let me stop right there. I will be happy to take any questions.
Question:Since MoS Agriculture and Food is accompanying the Vice-President, will there be any agreements relating to food and agriculture or any other agreements?
Joint Secretary (Eurasia):
Let me just make an overall comment. Visits by the Vice-President are normally goodwill visits, and we see them as a high-level continuation of a political dialogue with a very close strategic partner in Central Asia. Normally during these visits we do not have deliverables like agreements. But we certainly expect a conversation to take place on this issue to take forward the discussions that took place in September last year. Incidentally, in the agriculture sector, you know that Tajikistan is very strong in cotton, there was a great deal of discussion during the visit of President Rahmon last year, and we expect some further discussion to take place.
Question:The Vice President has a background of foreign affairs. Has he been working in that area in his previous avatar? Or does he know the President of Tajikistan personally?
Joint Secretary (Eurasia): Yes, the Vice President has worked in the contiguous area. As you know, he was Ambassador in Iran and Tajikistan’s roots are all Persian. So he is, I would say, an expert in the region apart from the fact that he has met President Rahmon personally and he has met in fact most of the leaders of Central Asia personally and has strong personal equations with them. He is, I believe, a scholar on the region and knows the history, background and culture very well. And we feel that this will certainly come into play in his conversations with the leadership.
Question:Is there any movement on the setting up of a military hospital facility in Tajikistan? And you mentioned the airbase at Ayni. Have the Indians disengaged and handed it over or are they still engaged in sort of jointly operating it?
Joint Secretary (Eurasia):
As I said, India has at the GMA Ayni airbase, India has contributed in terms of helping in renovation and reconstruction of that airport and making it state of the art. It is a military air field. India continues to be engaged there in training. We have a military training team present at the venue as well as for training cadets, young Tajik military officers, both in Tajikistan as well as in India.
On the hospital, yes, there is a talk going on of creating a hospital and you will come to know when it is done.
Question:Is there any contingency plan regarding the post-2014 after the withdrawal of the combat forces in Afghanistan because it is one of the areas of concern for both the countries?
Joint Secretary (Eurasia): Certainly we expect Afghanistan to be in focus in the conversation that Vice-President has with the leadership in Tajikistan. Even when President Rahmon was here in September 2012, that was a very important area for discussion, as I mentioned. Tajikistan is extremely concerned about the situation in Afghanistan. They have a 1425 kilometre, very porous border. There have been some troubling incidents in the south in the Badakshan region, and some Afghan mercenaries have been involved. We have, as I mentioned, a counterterrorism working group. We will certainly have conversation on the situation in Afghanistan and particularly, as you said, the situation as it will unfold post-2014 and the ISAF withdrawal.
Question:Do we have fighter plane stationed there in Tajik airbases?
Joint Secretary (Eurasia): No, we do not. At GMA, as I said, we have reconstructed an airfield and that is the extent of our engagement.
Question:Do you have any long-term business plan with Tajikistan being one of the central countries in Central Asia?
Joint Secretary (Eurasia): I think we just defined the elements of our long-term business plan. We have a very high level of engagement with Tajikistan; the President of Tajikistan was here; the Vice President of India is going there; we have declared a strategic partnership; and we have very strong areas of cooperation in multiple sectors including defence and on the trade side. So, I think there is a blueprint for very long-term coordination.
Question:…(Inaudible)… plan with Tajikistan, competing countries?
Joint Secretary (Eurasia): I am not here to comment on behalf of China or Russia or other forces. But let us just say that there are a number of active countries with whom Tajikistan incidentally has good relations and that includes Russia, China as well as the US. So, that is a question you should put to our Tajik friends.
Question:Are there any Indian firms in Tajikistan?
Joint Secretary (Eurasia): We have a very limited presence of Indian firms. There is one group from Bangalore called Khode which is trying to get active in Tajikistan. There is a wonderful five-star hotel coming up by the Crowne Plaza Group in Dushanbe. Those are two or three exceptional stories. BHEL of course is active as a public sector organization because of Tajikistan’s huge hydroelectric potential and their need to develop hydroelectric energy where we want to coordinate with them. But there is a limited presence of Indian companies in Dushanbe.
Question:Khode,are they making rum there?
Joint Secretary (Eurasia): No.
Official Spokesperson:Thank you.
(Concluded)
New Delhi
April 13, 2013
