New Delhi: Closer relations with the communist halves of three divided countries is top of India's diplomatic agenda since signing the treaty with Soviet Union. India has consulates in North Vietnam, North Korea and East Germany - which it recognised last year when Bonn (where it maintains an embassy) abandoned the Holstein doctrine.

The Soviet Union is anxious to exploit North Vietnamese apprehensions over the Sino-US thaw, and the pro Moscow CPI (Communist Party of India) has been pressing the government to raise diplomatic relations with Hanoi to ambassadorial level. In the wake of Dr. Henry Kissinger's visit to Peking in July, the North Vietnamese official newspaper Nhan Dan came out with an editorial which was taken by the CPI to indicate Hanoi's ideological differences with Peking.

The CPI has been cold to North Vietnam in the past. The independent CPI-M (Communist Party of India Marxist) has regarded itself as closer to the independent bloc of communist parties - North Vietnam, North Korea, Rumania and Cuba. But CPI circles now claim that not only will a North Vietnamese delegation attend its conference early in October but that its leader will probably be Party Secretary Le Duan. If this happens, it would suggest Hanoi has moved closer to Moscow ideologically. Official circles in New Delhi are increasingly aware of the importance of North Vietnam in Southeast Asia. A recent Radio Hanoi broadcast praising India's role has been welcomed.

Another consequence of New Delhi's treaty with Moscow is that India stands a good chance of being invited as an observer to the Comecon, the communist economic alliance. India's trade with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is expected to grow steadily. Paradoxically Yugoslavia, which is an associate member of Comecon, has decided to terminate its rupee trade arrangement with India from March 1972. Worried by its serious foreign exchange gap, Belgrade has been moving closer to West European trade groupings.

Its decision to end the rupee trade arrangement came as a rude shock to New Delhi but has not put paid to India's general optimism about rupee trade. The Comecon countries need to import sophisticated equipment and machinery and the solicitude for India, motivated largely by ideological considerations, may not last long.

Indo-Yugoslav relations are not at their rosiest. President Tito is to visit India this month but the Indo-Soviet treaty seems to have raised serious doubts in Belgrade about India's professed nonalignment. Tito, Nasser and Mrs. Gandhi were the big nonaligned trio when they met in 1966 in New Delhi.

Since, both Egypt and India have signed security pacts with the Soviet Union. India has to convince the Soviet Union that it takes the pact between them seriously - and the rest of the world that it does not affect its traditional independence of judgment.