INDIA:India has opted to continue its policy of "constructive engagement" with neighbouring Burma, despite widespread calls by western countries for international political action such as sanctions against its military junta following last month's crackdown on protesting Buddhist monks.
At the weekend, India quietly sent senior cabinet minister Ambika Soni to Rangoon to attend the funeral service of Burmese prime minister Gen Soe Win (59) who died of leukaemia last week.
Infamous for ordering an attack on democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's supporters in the northern town of Depayin four years ago, Gen Soe Win had in recent years been reduced to a figurehead because of his illness, but remained the fourth-ranking official in the country's military regime.
Diplomatic sources said other than Mrs Soni, representatives from China, which exercises massive influence over Burma, and other southeast Asian neighbours like Laos, Indonesia and Singapore also attended the funeral service.
Opposed to Burma's military junta after it seized power in 1989 and a firm supporter of Suu Kyi and her movement to restore Burma's democracy, India performed a swift U-turn around 2000 to blunt nuclear rival China's burgeoning defence and strategic links in that country and to tap into its vast oil and gas reserves.
India's aggressive diplomatic and military initiative with Rangoon thereafter, backed by a developmental and commercial drive, is also triggered by New Delhi wanting to jointly conduct military operations against Indian separatist groups waging insurgency for decades from inside Burma in its northeastern states of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur across the 1,600km-long common frontier.
As part of this "constructive engagement", the Indian navy is currently in the process of transferring two British-made Islander maritime surveillance aircraft to Burma, an add-on to the pair it had supplied the military junta in August 2006. It has also agreed to supply various military hardware such as T55 tanks, artillery, radar, assault rifles, light machine guns and ordnance.
India is also building and upgrading Burma's roads, modernising its ports, setting up a hydroelectric station, a satellite communication centre and an elaborate information technology project as an element of its broader "look East" policy of forging commercial and trade ties with prosperous southeast Asian states.
"India has long ignored China and to some extent Pakistan's growing influence with Burma's military government at its peril, and it is now looking to counter it," a senior military Indian official said.
Pakistan and close military ally China were among the handful of countries that disregarded international opinion and forged close military ties with Burma's military regime in 1988, complementing their strategy of encircling India.
But more recently officials in New Delhi are increasingly of the view that stern action against Burma such as sanctions would only end up "adversely affecting" the people, while the military regime would manage to survive.
The UN's special envoy on Burma Ibrahim Gambari is expected to visit India next week to hold talks on the current situation in Rangoon, while the US continues to ask New Delhi to play a more "constructive role" in promoting democracy in its neighbouring military-ruled state.