German Chance-llor Angela Merkel’s visit to India made headlines even before her aircraft landed in New Delhi Tuesday morning. Iran first refused permission to the Airbus A-340 “Konrad Adenauer”, Germany’s equivalent of the United States’ Air Force One, to fly in its airspace but later relented, delaying her arrival in New Delhi by two hours.
She more than made up for the avoidable distraction by immediately plunging headlong into the talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in which she reaffirmed Germany’s 10-year-old strategic partnership with India, inked four pacts to expand bilateral cooperation in areas such as vocational education and training, science and technology, and research, and exchanged views on a wide swath of issues such as trade, counter-terrorism, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which Germany and India are spearheading along with Brazil and Japan.
While Prime Minister Singh was “in agreement” with Ms Merkel on the need for UNSC reforms and he shared similar views about regional peace and security, some divergences were discernible in their positions on issues such as the way forward in Libya, whether a non-European should head the International Monetary Fund, and nuclear energy.
Ms Merkel, whose government announced plans Monday to shut down all nuclear power plants in Germany by 2022, wants the focus to shift to renewable sources of energy in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster. For his part, Dr Singh insisted that making use of nuclear energy, together with maximum possible emphasis on renewables, was a combination India needed if it was to meet its emission targets.
However, the differences did not dissuade Ms Merkel from offering to partner India in nuclear safety and green energy. The defence and security dialogue was progressing satisfactorily, too. Indian counter-terrorism officials were expected to meet their German counterparts in September to discuss operational matters, including, but not limited to, equipment and technologies. Also, external affairs minister S.M. Krishna would participate in the Bonn conference on Afghanistan in December.
From Germany’s perspective, the contract for the sale of multi-role aircraft to the Indian Air Force will be of considerable significance given that the Eurofighter Typhoon is one of two aircraft on New Delhi’s shortlist. Speaking at a joint press conference with Dr Singh, Ms Merkel said, “With the Eurofighter we have made good proposals and want to intensify our relationship with India. The Eurofighter is the best product on offer.”
Incidentally, the diplomatic standoff between Iran and Germany over denial of permission to the “Konrad Adenauer”, named after post-war Germany’s first Chancellor, coincided with the visit here by an Iranian delegation for resolving the issue of oil payments. India is seeking an alternative mechanism for making payments for the import of crude oil from Iran after Germany discontinued the practice of routing the payments through the Hamburg-based Europaisch-Iranische Handelsbank AG.
Iran’s relations with Germany, which along with the five permanent UNSC members had held negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme, has deteriorated of late. Recently the European Union and the US imposed further sanctions on Iran.
The Iranian ambassador in Berlin was called to the German foreign ministry to explain the snub. Iran is since understood to have blamed “technical-organisational events”, according to a media report, for the lapse due to which Ms Merkel’s aircraft was forced to circle over Turkey for a couple of hours.
Ms Merkel is the second European head of government to have visited India on a refurbished aircraft. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had used a new official Airbus, dubbed “Air Sarko One”, for his December 2010 visit here, although, unlike Ms Merkel, he had already flown on its maiden flight to South Korea for the G-8 summit in November.