The United States, the European Union and most western countries are, of course, bitterly opposed to Burma's military junta that has had the country in its vice-like grip since 1988. Only last month American journal Foreign Policy described Than Shwe as the 'third worst dictator' after Kim Il Sung of North Korea and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Indeed, over the years successive American presidents have remonstrated with successive Indian prime ministers over this country's close relationship with Burma under a tyrannical military regime. But each time New Delhi has told Washington politely but firmly that India's security and fundamental interests would take precedence over everything else. On  one occasion an American dignitary  was told, 'You seem to have no compunction about other military dictatorships that are your allies'. In this context it is interesting that Than Shwe and Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron will be in India at the same time. South Block is taking good care, however, that the two visits are kept entirely apart.

There was a time when India, too, supported the restoration of democracy movement in Burma, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, but it found that this was driving the Burmese military regime deeper and deeper into China's embrace. Nothing could have been more threatening to Indian security and supreme interests. The necessary policy change was made in the early nineties when P. V. Narasimha Rao was prime minister.

No wonder then that, happy with the red-carpet treatment he is getting, Gen. Than Shwe is totally unconcerned   about the West's trenchant criticism of him and the regime he heads. Whatever his domestic difficulties — and these are quite a few, some of them relating to long-promised but still unscheduled elections, the first in 20 years — he has little worry about his foreign policy. For he has developed to a fine art a policy    of playing his two neighbours, India   and China, off against each other and using these two Asian giants as a powerful shield against the West's  wrath. This is geopolitics at its most skilful.

Both India and China have the   highest stakes in Burma that is indeed a meeting ground between Asia's two competing major powers. Neither country wants the other to be able to swamp the strategically vital country sandwiched between them. China was almost on the verge of doing it — giving Burma generous aid both financial and military, building its infrastructure, and ensuring that more and more Chinese from southwestern China moved into North Burma — when India hurriedly did course correction and built bridges of understanding with the Generals. Both China and India have continued to augment Burma's infrastructure. The Chinese activity is much more brisk; India cannot fully catch up because of the abominable 'no-men' of the Indian bureaucracy. A major power project on the Chindwin River has been hanging fire since 1994.

The current symbols of Than Shwe's ability to use his leverage with both China and India are two huge and very special infrastructure projects. India is building a much-needed transport corridor in its communications-starved North-east and China is constructing through Burmese territory a twin set of pipelines to move oil and gas from Burmese fields to its Yunan province. Interestingly, the two projects converge at Burma's port of Sittwe on the Arakan coast of the Bay of Bengal, and both projects are being fully financed by India and China. Ironically, India has a 40 per cent stake in the Burmese oil and gas fields from which China will be taking away oil and gas through the two pipelines. At first India was negotiating to transport the gas and oil to its North-east. But the conditions Bangladesh wanted to impose for allowing Indian pipelines to pass  through its territory were impossible to accept.

Now the Indian plan is massively to increase connectivity with the isolated north-eastern states, which it can at present reach only through a narrow 21-mile sliver nicknamed the Siliguri Neck. When complete, the contemplated project would enable India to provision and thus develop its north-east via the Burmese port, Sittwe. For this purpose India has greatly to improve Sittwe harbour and deepen a river. Recently, there has been a conspicuous improvement in India's relations with Bangladesh, the natural route from the Indian hinterland to the northeast. But    it will take a long time before Bangladesh can agree to restore the transit facilities that existed until the 1965 war on the subcontinent when Bangladesh was the Eastern Wing of Pakistan.

A major advantage India received during the 1990s when relations with Burma took an upswing was that the Burmese army gave India full help in curbing insurgencies in the North-east. It even participated in joint action with the Indian army. There was a hiccup once,  in the midst of a joint operation, when India announced that the Nehru Award for that year would go to Aung San Suu Kyi — then, as now, under house arrest. The problem was overcome quickly. The two armies are again cooperating   nicely except that the Burmese army has lost control of the Kachin areas and this has enabled the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) to resume its nefarious activities in Arunachal Pradesh.

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