"India has launched an aggressive campaign to secure its own dependable supplies of both oil and gas," analyst Stephen Blank wrote Monday in the Eurasia Daily Monitor of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation.

"While India's campaign is global in scope, a major focus is clearly on Gulf, Russian and Central Asian supplies," Blank wrote. "Therefore India is negotiating with Iran to obtain equity access to blocs of Iranian oil and gas and to build a series of oil and gas pipelines."

The Indian strategy is driven by necessity. But it also reflects the experience and vision of the nation's Petroleum Minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar.

India is the second most populous nation in the world and its economy is prospering and growing on a scale that currently only China exceeds. Yet India's own domestic sources of oil, mainly in the Rajasthan desert, are not remotely capable of meeting the nation's vast and growing energy needs.

Russia has been India's most important geo-strategic ally for more than three decades and even while the pro-American previous government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee eagerly sought to develop closes strategic ties with the Bush administration, it took care never to endanger its ties with Moscow.

Now, in the almost one year since the Congress Party led by Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took over, India has increasingly courted Russia and Iran.

Aiyar, a veteran Indian diplomat, Middle East expert and close adviser to late Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his widow Sonia, who runs the ruling Congress Party, has long been an champion of strengthening ties to Russia.

And the tremendous growth of the Russian energy sector in recent years, coupled with India's increasing need for vast new supplies of oil outside the unstable Middle East if possible, have greatly strengthened his hand in shaping national policy.

"The strategic alliance with Russia in energy security ... is becoming, for India at least, as important as our national security," Aiyar said recently.

On Dec. 3-4, visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin validated Aiyar's vision. He gratefully accepted an Indian investment of $3 billion in the Sakhalin-3 oil field in the Russian Far East, and in the joint Russian-Kazakh Kurmangazy oil field in the Caspian Sea that has a potential of up to 1 billion tons of oil. India already held a 20 percent stake in Russia's energy-rich Sakhalin-1 block.

India is also pursuing new energy deals with Moscow that could amount to as much as $20 billion in value.

Commented Stephen Blank, "Russia, for its part, is open to considering deals that would bring Indian firms, particularly India's national Oil and Natural Gas Company, into fields in the Far East, Eastern Siberia, the Barents Sea, and the Timan-Pechora region. India would participate with Gazprom, Rosneft and Transneft and these deals could include part of the former Yukos."

Gazprom is Russia's state owned gas producing giant. Rosneft is the state oil company; and Transneft is the oil transport corporation.

India under Aiyar has been equally energetic in seeking to nail down substantive energy projects and agreements with Iran. It is negotiating with Tehran to obtain equity access to blocs of Iranian oil and gas.

And it is also seeking to build a web of oil and gas pipelines across South and West Asia to Iran through the intervening nations of unstable Afghanistan and traditionally hostile Pakistan.

Before becoming Petroleum Minister, Aiyar made no secret of his opposition to the U.S. invasion and continuing presence in Iraq. Certainly, the last thing predominantly Hindu India wants to see is the continued destabilization of Iraq - with which it had warm ties and energy deals through the rule of President Saddam Hussein - and of Iran.

Any massive anti-American and anti-Western extreme Islamist reaction set off by the U.S. presence in Iraq or through any possible future conflict with Iran, could have a devastating effect on India with its huge minority of 150 million Muslims, a figure greater than the entire population of Pakistan.

In courting Russia, India has powerful cards to play of its own. The growing success of the Indian Information-Technology driven high-tech economy gives Indian companies the financial clout to provide the investment Russia desperately needs to develop and re-capitalize its own oil industry infrastructure. And Russia still lags badly in exactly the IT areas where India now excels.

Indeed, during his December state visit to India, President Putin sought to cash in on India's success in creating a rival to Silicon Valley. The Russian leader called for a bilateral effort to develop information technology and tap new markets.

"I see the foundations of a strategic partnership in high-technology projects," Putin told business leaders and government officials during a tour of India's high-tech hub of Bangalore. "We could jointly develop new high-technology products and market them to third countries."

India is the world's leading IT outsourcer, with more than 20 percent of the global market, compared with less than one percent for Russia. At the time of Putin's visit, the Moscow Times quoted market watchers as saying Russia will continue to fall further behind unless the government provides tangible support for the industry soon.

But at a time of growing tensions and even distrust between the United States and Russia, when the fabled personal friendship of Presidents Putin and George W. Bush seems to be crumbling under their increasingly incompatible policies, the Congress government's energy strategy of wooing Russia and Iran appears to put obvious constraints on how far it can and will go to satisfy Washington.

A Congress government in New Delhi that is courting Tehran for its oil will not look kindly, to say the least, on any U.S. moves to use military force against Iran's nuclear program, let alone any efforts by U.S. Special Forces or Iranian radical groups backed by Washington to topple the government of the Islamic Republic.

And an Indian government dependent on Middle East oil imports that has seen global oil prices soar to as high as $54 per barrel in recent months before nervously settling downin the mid-$40s per barrel will not be impressed by any U.S. arguments that confronting Iran and risking any conflict with the Iranians will bring oil prices down or even keep them where they are.

India urgently needs oil prices to stabilize where they are, or better to fall, in order to keep its current boom going.

And for that it needs peace and stability in the Middle East, not aggressive U.S. policies to confront Iran, threaten Syria and put pressure to democratize Saudi Arabia, thereby risking its destabilization.

Prime Minister Singh will certainly prefer to avoid choosing between his ties to Washington on the one hand and his energy initiatives with Russia and Iran on the other. But if Washington compels him to choose, it should not be surprised to find itself the jilted party.

All rights reserved. � 2005 United Press International. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by United Press International. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of United Press International.

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