'Armitage visit has no special significance'

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, MAY 3. The Bush administration has said there is no special significance in the Deputy Secretary of State, Mr. Richard Armitage, travelling to India and not to China. The media was also cautioned against reading too much into top defence officials travelling only to the Atlantic countries and not to the Pacific nations.

At the State Department, the deputy spokesman, Mr. Philip Reeker, was asked whether Mr. Armitage's mission to New Delhi and not to Beijing, in any way reflected the administration's thinking that India had now become one of its friends and that China was neither a friend nor an enemy.

``Boy, that would just take this tremendous amount of analysis. I don't know that we have time to do that kind of thing,'' Mr. Reeker said. He pointed out that Mr. Armitage had a finite amount of time to carry out the President's task; he had worked out his schedule to travel to Tokyo, Seoul and New Delhi.

``Our relationships with all three of those countries are very important relationships... Our relationship with China is an important relationship of great complexity... So I wouldn't try to read anything particular into it,'' Mr. Reeker said adding Mr. Armitage's talks in New Delhi, apart from National Missile Defence, would also cover bilateral relations.

It is pointed out that there is no special significance to the fact that while the State Department is taking the lead with countries in the Pacific, the Pentagon is doing the same with nations in the Atlantic. A delegation comprising the Deputy Defence Secretary, Mr. Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy National Security Adviser, Mr. Steve Hadley, and the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Mr. Marc Grossman, is scheduled to visit Europe.

``I don't think anybody should read anything particular into it. You have a finite number of senior officials at the Deputy level dispatched by the President, and so the Deputy Secretary of State is going West across the Pacific,and the Deputy Secretary of Defence and the Deputy National Security Adviser are going East across the Atlantic. They've just split it up that way and will come back and report to their respective Secretaries,'' Mr. Reeker said.

While cautioning the media not to read too much into the agenda or the travel plans, the Bush administration is also trying to give the impression that it is business as usual with Beijing. On the one hand, the State Department is not sure if the Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. James Kelly, will travel to Beijing to discuss the President's proposals with the Chinese. On the other, Mr. Kelly has been in touch with the Chinese Ambassador here.

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon officials withdrew a directive from the Defence Secretary, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, to suspend all contact with the Chinese military. Hours after a memo written by an aide to Mr. Rumsfeld had been leaked to the press, the Pentagon withdrew it saying the aide had ``misinterpreted the Secretary's intentions''. Now the status is for all military-to- military programmes to be approved on a case to case basis.

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