It’s a relationship that appears to be going from strength to strength, perhaps to Beijing’s discomfort.
So less than a month after India’s foreign minister S.M. Krishna was in Hanoi on a bilateral visit, New Delhi is now readying itself for the arrival of Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang, who will be here next week.
The visit is being seen as an important one given the close ties between the two countries which were described as “acquiring momentum, greater depth” by India’s foreign ministry spokesperson as recently in September. Indeed, in 2007 the two countries had inked a strategic partnersip agreement.
And with India’s firmly focused on its “Look East” policy, Vietnam was described as an “important pillar, a vital pillar, a key pillar” of this policy by the spokesperson.
Apart from the growing strategic and defence ties, trade between the two countries too is burgeoning. It’s grown by five times in the last six years. The target for 2010 was two billion dollars but the actual trade during 2010-11 was much more at 3.65 billion dollars.
The Vietnamese President’s visit also becomes all the more important given India’s strategic and security interests in the region and particularly the South China Sea, the vast expanse of water over which the Chinese have claimed “indisputable sovereignty”.
Chinese muscle-flexing over its claims on the South China Sea saw an Indian amphibious warship, INS Airavat being contacted by a Chinese warship through an open radio channel, external affairs ministry officials here maintain there was no “confrontation”.
September also saw Beijing needling New Delhi over the oil exploration work in two oil blocks being done by ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) in the South China Sea just days ahead of Mr Krishna’s visit to Hanoi.
India, whose increasingly cooperating with hanoi in the areas of energy and hydrocarbons, however, chose to ignore this warning maintaining that the oil block were in Vietnam’s territorial waters.
With Vietnam having a coastline stretching over nearly 3,000-km along the South China Sea, what is does vis a vis its claims over it is crucial to the security politics being played out over claims on it, say foreign policy experts.
As foreign policy expert and JNU professor C. Rajamohan said during a discussion on `Natural Partners: Building India-Vietnam Strategic Cooperation’ organised by the ORF Foundation on Friday, “China has disputes with almost everybody in the Spouth China Sea be it Vietnam, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Japan.” And he feared that these disputes will only increase.