'Foreign policy not Pakistan-centred'

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI, FEB. 2. The impression that Indian foreign policy has become Pakistan- centred after the hijacking of IC-814 is ``misleading'', sources in the Government say.

They were responding to widely felt concerns that the Government had become obsessed with Pakistan after the frustrating Kandahar episode and is allowing its diplomacy to be hijacked by Islamabad.

Although hostility towards Islamabad looms large in New Delhi and India will continue to draw international attention to Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism, ``we will not push ourselves back into an Indo-Pakistan box,'' the sources argue.

Officials in the Ministry of External Affairs point to an incipient phase of intensive diplomatic engagement across a broad front with the great powers as well as regional actors.

The Foreign Secretary, Mr. Lalit Mansingh, will be travelling to Washington next week for talks with the Under- Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Mr. Thomas Pickering, and begin preparations for President Clinton's visit.

Meanwhile, the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr. Brajesh Misra, will be travelling to Paris early next week for the next round of the Indo-French strategic dialogue.

After this, the French Foreign Minister, Mr. Herbert Vedrine, will come to India to move forward the recent bonhomie between New Delhi and Paris.

On the Chinese front, preparations are on to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries that falls on April 1. Dates for the visit to Beijing by the President, Mr. K.R. Narayanan, are being finalised.

India and China are also fixing dates for the first round of security dialogue between the two sides at the level of senior officials.

In the next few days, India and Japan will hold foreign office consultations in New Delhi. The former Prime Minister of Japan, Mr. Ryutaro Hashimoto, due here in the next few days will discuss the normalisation of relations between the two countries.

The Government is also looking at a possible summit meeting with Russia immediately after the elections there at the end of next month.

India is also paying renewed attention to relations with South East Asia which had begun to stagnate in the last couple of years.

Following the recent visit of the Singapore Prime Minister, Mr. Goh Chok Tong, the President of world's largest Islamic State, Indonesia, Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, will be arriving here next week for a two-day visit.

Meanwhile, within the sub-continent, despite the frozen ties with Pakistan and the SAARC in a coma, India will continue to push the agenda of regional economic integration.

The operationalisation of the free trade treaty with Sri Lanka today and the increased efforts to solve a range of problems with Bangladesh, sources here point out, are important signals.

The burden of the argument here is that although there are very serious problems with Islamabad, ``there is a world beyond Pakistan'' that India must continue to engage.

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