The Hindu : 'Poetry, partnership and Pakistan'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 25, 2003

International

International - India & World

'Poetry, partnership and Pakistan'

By P.S. Suryanarayana

BEIJING June 24. `Poetry, partnership and a bit of Pakistan'. This was how the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, summed up the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee's talks with the Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China and the country's former President, Jiang Zemin.

Mr. Vajpayee's talks with both Mr. Jiang, and China's President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Hu Jintao, covered a wide range of issues which, taken together, helped set the stage for the political voyage that the two countries had outlined in their `Declaration on Principles for Relations and Comprehensive Cooperation', a document that was firmed up in the context of the dialogue that Mr. Vajpayee and his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, had engaged themselves in here on Monday.

At least one specific issue, concerning the possibility of Sino-Indian naval cooperation in search and rescue operations, figured during the Jiang-Vajpayee discussions, according to the Indian side. From the Chinese standpoint, Mr. Hu noted that the present Sino-Indian engagement would send out a message to the international community that the two were coming closer.

However, even as the Chinese spokesman, Kong Quan, maintained that the rapprochement should not be seen as an exercise aimed against any other country, it became obvious that the stereotyped images of China as a bastion of power politics behind a bamboo curtain on the international stage or as the self-styled ``Middle Kingdom'' with a ``Mandate of Heaven'' were no longer the leitmotif.

For the transition from the present state of wary engagement towards dialogue with a sense of mutual trust and fair play, the two sides are now said to have taken a small step that could become a giant leap. This general perspective of the Indian side has taken shape on the basis of the relative ease with which the latest Declaration has been agreed upon.

In this sense, the Vajpayee visit, which is not being compared with either Rajiv Gandhi's visit here in 1988 or P. V. Narasimha Rao's in 1993, is being portrayed as an important one. While the Chinese side has depicted Mr. Vajpayee's ongoing tour of China as a ``landmark visit'' in view of the new formulation of Tibet among other themes, Chinese sources have told this correspondent that Beijing would watch New Delhi's moves, if any at this time or in the future, towards Taiwan. Nonetheless, China might begin to take note of India's sensitivities regarding Sikkim in a gesture of reciprocity over New Delhi's view of the Tibet issue, the sources said. New Delhi's Sikkim-related sensitivities might define the ``realistic factors'' that the Chinese spokesman, Kong Quan, cited today even while maintaining that Sikkim was an enduring issue left over from history.

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