NEW DELHI – Although India is portraying Masood Azhar’s terror tag as aone-sided diplomatic victory, it lost its resistance to China’smulti-billion Dollars Belt and Road Initiative in the bid, it has emerged.
Days ago when Azhar was added to UN terror list, New Delhi claimed victory,however, reports are rife that India kept mum over the recent BRI summit togain China’s support on the matter.
Leading Indian daily, Hindustan Times reported on Friday that the decisionto list Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist wassealed about 10 days ago, just before the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing.
The negotiations that ultimately took shape a few days ago took place inNew York, while Washington, Delhi, Beijing, Paris, London and Islamabadwere in the loop as per officials from at least six countries involved inthe discussions.
“It was a multilateral game played at a subterranean level,” a top sourcesaid, explaining the complex web of bargains involved.
The negotiations for the listing of Azhar started in March when Chineseinterlocutor Kong Xuanyou visited Pakistan, and Islamabad put fivepre-conditions before Beijing could uplift the technical hold; thenegotiations took place when the March 13 deadline for raising objectionsto the listing under the UNSC Resolution 1267 sanctions committee waslooming large.
At that time, New Delhi had circulated its dossier on Azhar with all UNmembers, to make its case — that he was accused in multiple terror attacksin India, from the Parliament attack in 2001 to the Pulwama terror strikein 2019.
When Beijing remained the lone country to put a technical hold on thelisting, India kept mum apparently becausee the back-door talks wereunderway and China had signed off on UNSC condemnation statement on thePulwama attack.
Pakistan’s five pre-conditions to Delhi were conveyed by China as:de-escalate the situation; start bilateral dialogue; don’t link the Pulwamaattack to Azhar’s listing; don’t push, along with the US, for more listingsof other individuals and groups in Pakistan; and, stop violence in Kashmir
While Pakistan’s pre-conditions were not acceptable to India, Beijing addedone more and that was to support its Belt and Road Initiative.
New Delhi had vehemently opposed the Belt and Road Forum in May 2017, andhas maintained that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a part ofBRI, violates India’s territorial sovereignty and integrity as it crossesthrough Kashmir lying in Pakistan.
India subsequently traded its silence on this year’s BRI with MasoodAzhar’s listing as Beijing was already used to “transactional” nature ofdiplomacy, and had signed off on the “grey listing” of Pakistan by theFinancial Action Task Force (FATF) as it wanted the vice-chair of FATF.
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At the end of March, the US, UK and France decided to push the resolutionfor Azhar’s listing at the UNSC instead of the 1267 sanctions committee,however, China did not like the idea as it would have to make a publicstatement on why it was defending Azhar’s listing.
As April dawned, India and Pakistan had also managed to de-escalate thesituation after and so the first pre-condition was fulfilled.
By mid-April, the conversation around the BRI gathered steam, with the USasking China to be ready to lift its hold by April 23 if it did not wishthe matter to be taken up at the UNSC.
This was the time when India agreed that it would not issue any statementon the BRI, unlike in May 2017, but made it known that it was not changingits position.
Pakistan had okayed the move regarding Azhar’s listing to China when theBelt and Road Forum was approaching on April 25; Beijing and Islamabad alsocalculated that the listing will place Pakistan at an advantage when theFATF assesses its future of grey-listing.
The Iran-India equation was also reviewed by Trump administration as onApril 22, the US announced that it was not going to grant any waivers toIndia, along with other countries, for importing oil from Iran.
With Azhar’s listing at stake, Delhi, which has always resisted unilateralsanctions in the past, decided to play along.
Meanwhile, the US wanted China to give a written understanding that it willnot object to Azhar’s listing and failure to do so would result in opendiscussion and voting proposal at the UNSC by April 23; the date, which wasearlier being negotiated for May 15, was then agreed for May 1. Beijingagreed to the date and the proposal to list at that time.
Interestingly, by the time India’s Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale went toBeijing on April 22, the deal was sealed and the listing was set to takeplace at 9 am New York time (6.30 pm IST) on May 1.
As India portrays Azhar’s listing as a setback for Islamabad and Beijing,facts put the whole episode in a different position as all the parties wereon board and the listing did not link Azhar to the Pulwama attack in whichover 40 Indian soldiers were left dead.
