New Delhi, June 21
As Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee begins his six-day visit to China tomorrow he will use the opportunity to convey a subtle diplomatic message to Pakistan: people-to-people contacts, cultural ties and trade relations are the foundation of a vibrant bilateral relationship.
Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal today said the foreign ministers of India, China and Russia would be having an exclusive meeting on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York this September.
Mr Sibal’s brief remark about the New York meeting has once again turned the spotlight on the possibility of an India-China-Russia axis and the Foreign Secretary, when asked about it pointedly, neither denied nor confirmed it.
He merely described the prospective meeting of the three countries’ foreign ministers as a meeting of several important “poles” which are striving to make this world multi-polar once again.
Mr Sibal was at pains to clarify that the meeting of the three countries’ foreign ministers should not be seen as a “forum” to jointly lobby for or against something or someone. A tangible progress towards bringing about an India-China-Russia “axis” seemed to have been made last September when the foreign ministers of the three countries met for the first time on the margins of the UN General Assembly.
The major difficulty in bringing the trio together on a common platform is that while India-Russia and Russia-China relations are quite good, the weakest link in the triad is that of Sino-India relations. The New Delhi-Beijing ties for decades have been affected by mutual distrust and also by an “all-weather” relationship between China and Pakistan.
During his press briefing today, Mr Sibal dropped hints of how the Sino-Indian rapprochement was being choreographed.
To facilitate better people-to-people contacts, an across-the-board agreement on the relaxation of the visa regime between the two countries is being worked out and the agreement is going to be inked during Mr Vajpayee’s China visit.
Mr Sibal went to the extent of saying that India would use the Prime Minister’s coming China visit to demonstrate to the world how ties between two countries can improve by stepping up people-to-people contacts and increasing the trade, economic and cultural content of the bilateral relationship. In the same breath, he said this was precisely what India had been achieving to do vis a vis Pakistan.
The Foreign Secretary pointed out that Track Two diplomacy was also being used for improving Sino-India relations as two seminars had already been held on the subject and the third in the series was going to be held in India shortly.
Trade is going to be a win-win area for the two countries as several agreements aimed at boosting bilateral trade are going to be signed between New Delhi and Beijing during this visit.
