Jaishankar to visit Tel Aviv next week ahead of PM’s trip
Foreign secretary S Jaishankar is embarking on a two-day trip to Tel Aviv next Thursday to finalise the July visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that will bring the 25-year relationship totally above board with a focus on agriculture, desalination of sea water for drinking purposes and sanitation.
Jaishankar is expected in Israel on May 18-19 for meetings with his counterpart Yuval Rotem and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The foreign secretary and his Israeli counterparts will discuss the agreement expected to be signed during Modi’s visit. Jaishankar is going at a time when the entire Israeli government would be preparing for a day’s visit by US President Donald Trump. Modi will be in Israel on July 5-6 to mark the 25th anniversary of diplomatic ties.
Government sources told HT that Jaishankar’s visit will follow the just-concluded trip of agriculture secretary Sobhan Pattanayak, water resources secretary Amarjeet Singh and drinking water and sanitation secretary Parmeswaran Iyer this week.
While the focus of Pattaproduce
nayak’s visit was to increase cooperation in agriculture technologies in arid areas with pinpointed irrigation, the two other secretaries focused on the Sorek desalination plant.
The world’s largest sea water desalination plant with an output of 624,000 cubic metres of drinking water per day, Sorek, along with three other desalination plants, has turned Israel from a water-deficit nation to a surplus one.
Three other plants — at Ashkelon, Palmahim and Hadera — along the Mediterranean coast 290 million cubic of water per year. “India is looking towards setting up desalination plants on the Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu coast in future to remove drinking water scarcity,” said a senior official.
India-Israel defence ties will also get a fillip in the run-up to Modi’s visit, with Tel Aviv offering a medium-altitude long-endurance missile-firing drone to New Delhi during defence secretary G Mohan Kumar’s visit last month.
However, the Modi government is keen on ‘Make in India’ in defence on the lines of Punj Lloyd setting up units for Tavor assault rifles, Galil sniper rifles, Negev light machine guns as well as a Jericho pistol factory in collaboration with Israeli Weapon Industries in Malanpur, Madhya Pradesh, on May 4.
During Modi’s trip, the focus will be on high-end technologies developed by the Israelis, including close cooperation in cyber security to prevent attacks from enemy nations.
Apart from this, the two countries will further cement cooperation in intelligence sharing in the context of terrorist groups such as IS in West Asia and Islamic jihadist groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.
India hopes Pakistan questioning the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will not weaken its prospects of getting relief for former naval officer Kulbushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and sabotage.
The Indian hopes lie on the twin points that the case, a consular matter, is not about the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ over a matter. Then, it can also get around the possibility of Pakistan invoking clauses from a bilateral pact on consular access.
The ICJ, the judicial arm of the UN, will begin oral hearing on the case on Monday.
Pakistan had revised its declaration on compulsory jurisdiction on March 29, which spells out terms under which Islamabad accepts the ICJ on matters of dispute settlement. While it could argue that Pakistan could have anticipated the possibility of India moving ICJ, informed sources said the ‘compulsory jurisdiction’ is not an issue here.
India moved the ICJ under 36 (1) of its statue, because both India and Pakistan are signatories to the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR). This international treaty has ICJ as the arbiter in disputes.
“In this case, India invokes the Optional Protocol of the VCCR. The bases for jurisdiction are separate from what happened in 1999 where in an Aerial Incident, ICJ upheld the Indian view on jurisdiction,” said a source.
India also believes that the bilateral consular treaty with Pakistan will not be a factor here as Islamabad has been arguing that the treaty of 2008 exempts those case that are related to “national security”.
However, the UN charter says “no party to any such treaty or international agreement which has not been registered in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1 of this Article (102) may invoke that treaty or agreement before any organ of the United Nations”.
This means Pakistan may not be able to invoke the treaty before the ICJ.
JAYANTH JACOB