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By Amit Baruah
The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, with the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, in St. Petersburg on Saturday.
Indian officials were "positive" about the first-ever meeting between Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Hu, with the Prime Minister suggesting that if the two countries were to cooperate this could even result in the 21st century turning into the "Asian century". When Mr. Vajpayee put forward his idea of the "Asian century", Mr. Hu said he fully agreed that India and China were developing countries that were faced with the task of developing their economies. It was pointed out that the Indian and Chinese peoples, between them, constituted one-third of the world's population and if both countries were to join hands they could shape the global agenda. The Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal, quoted the Chinese leader as saying that Beijing gave top priority to friendship and cooperation with India. China, Mr. Hu said, stood ready to deepen its relationship with India. "It was a good, friendly meeting where all the right things were said. Both countries want to deepen and diversify their relationship and synergise their respective economic potential and growth," he said. According to Mr. Sibal, there was no reference to the extensive India-China boundary dispute given the fact that the meeting was intended to create a propitious atmosphere between the two countries. Officials said that the meeting was a good one and hoped that it would lay the foundation for faster progress on clarifying the Line of Actual Control (LAC) when the Prime Minister visited China next month. The two sides were also working on a joint statement to be issued during the Prime Minister's stay in Beijing. Mr. Sibal said there was no discussion on India-Pakistan issues between the two, but that the Chinese President noted in a "general sense" that the Prime Minister had taken the initiative to resume contact with Pakistan. The "central message'' from the Vajpayee-Hu meeting was that the two countries were big nations and should cooperate with each other. It was good for regional peace and security that India and China had identical views on international issues. Officials said that Mr. Hu was measured in his approach at the meeting that covered substantive issues though it lasted the scheduled half-an-hour. About half of the meeting was taken up by "interpretation" they said, but this in no way detracted from the content. They were, however, hesitant to predict what impact this meeting would have on the upcoming visit of the Prime Minister as far as the boundary issue was concerned. The Chinese leader said he was "glad" India had not been affected by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and referred to the steps his Government had taken to stop the spread of SARS in China and, in turn, to the rest of the world. For his part, Mr. Vajpayee congratulated Mr. Hu on China's success in controlling the spread of the deadly disease. Mr. Sibal said the issue of having regular summit-level meetings with China did not come up for discussion. However, he added that the first-ever trilateral meeting between the Indian, Chinese and Russian Foreign Ministers in New York last year would take place again.
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