Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's official visit to Russia on May 11-14 will mark another step in Moscow's strategy of engaging Islamabad.
Russian-Pakistani relations have recently acquired breathtaking dynamics. When Mr. Zardari meets Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday it will be their fifth meeting in the past three years, even if the four previous interactions were on the sidelines of multilateral forums.
The current summit was prepared in record time: it was only last August that Mr. Medvedev extended an invitation to his Pakistani counterpart to come to Moscow. By comparison, it took the then President, Pervez Musharraf, years to get the Kremlin to act on its formal invitation to him. Russia then was still looking at Pakistan through India's eyes, and Mr. Musharraf's visit to Moscow in 2003 failed to break the ice. The current summit is different if only because the Kremlin has since de-hyphenated its relations with New Delhi and Islamabad.
Pakistan has now taken centre stage in Russia's efforts to play a more active role in Central and South Asia as Moscow braces for the drawdown of U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.
At a summit in Sochi last August, Russia institutionalised a quadripartite forum with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan to counter the spread of drugs, terrorism and instability via Central Asia towards Russian borders. The four countries agreed to undertake joint economic projects in power generation, transport infrastructure and mining. At a follow-up meeting of economic Ministers in Moscow last October, the four discussed in greater detail plans to rebuild a trade Silk Route from former Soviet Central Asia via Afghanistan to Pakistan and export electricity from Tajikistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Russia confirmed its readiness to invest in the oil, gas and hydropower sectors of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan.
Energising economic ties
In the past few months Moscow and Islamabad have prepared the ground for energising their flagging economic ties. The Inter-governmental Commission on Trade and Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation met for the first time in Moscow last September. Two months later Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani at a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Dushanbe that Russia was willing to help fund and build the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, to which Moscow was earlier opposed. During Mr. Zardari's visit the sides are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding for the modernisation and expansion of the Pakistan Steel Mills in Karachi, which the Soviet Union built in the 1970s, as well as five other MoUs for the supply of Russian rail tracks, cooperation in the oil and gas sector, power generation, coal mining and agriculture.
The Pakistani President is arriving in Russia ten days after U.S. commandoes killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan where he had enjoyed safe haven for years. However, Moscow made it clear this fact will not affect relations with Islamabad.
“Russia fully recognises and appreciates the substantial contribution made by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to the efforts of world community” in countering international terrorism, Russian Ambassador to Pakistan Andrey Budnik said in an article he penned several days after the operation in Abbottabad.
The reason why Russia refused to join the U.S. in ostracising Islamabad is Afghanistan.
“Russia attaches great importance to cooperation with Pakistan in the sphere of Afghan settlement,” Mr. Budnik wrote. He explained that this cooperation was based on a shared understanding that the quest for peace in Afghanistan “must not become the prerogative of solely external players”, an obvious reference to the U.S.
Russia's veteran diplomat and orientalist Zamir Kabulov, appointed two months ago to the newly instituted post of the Kremlin representative for Afghanistan, immediately stated that Moscow is “open to dialogue” with those in the Taliban who are prepared to cut ties with al-Qaeda. Russia clearly counts on Pakistan to facilitate such dialogue. In return it promises to support Pakistan's bid to join the SCO.
Pakistan, along with the other observer nations in the SCO, “has all the chances to become a full member of the organisation”, according to the Russia envoy to Islamabad.
Mr. Zardari in return has offered to provide for Russia “access to warm seas”.
All the settings are there that the current summit may be a momentous event not only for Russian-Pakistani relations, but for the entire region.
