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China is positive towards civilian nuclear cooperation with India

— Photo: PTI/Shahbaz Khan

CRUCIAL MEETing: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is greeted by his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, before a meeting in Beijing on Sunday.

Beijing: Some concrete steps towards an understanding on civilian nuclear cooperation, going beyond the positive but little-noticed paragraph on the subject in the Joint Declaration issued during President Hu Jintao’s state visit to India in November 2006, could be a surprise outcome of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to China. In their talks during a restricted private dinner on Sunday, Premier Wen Jiabao was extremely positive about taking these steps. To Dr. Singh’s suggestion that the chairman of China’s Atomic Energy Authority could be invited to visit India, the Chinese leader’s response was that it was an excellent idea.

Over a period of several months, Chinese leaders have been making it clear that Beijing’s attitude to New Delhi’s efforts to end the nuclear technology denial regime is by no means negative, contrary to what some press reports have alleged. They have said this directly to Indian political leaders. In August 2007, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi conveyed the same positive message to the India-China Eminent Persons Group when Indian members asked him about China’s stand on the issue.

In the 2006 Joint Declaration, the two countries underlined the importance of expanding their civilian nuclear energy programmes and agreed to “promote cooperation in the field of nuclear energy consistent with their respective international commitments.” India is keen on taking this general formulation to a more concrete level, knowing of course that the tap of international civilian nuclear supplies will not open without exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines.

The boundary question might not have come up at Sunday’s restricted private dinner but Prime Minister Singh will seek support from the top Chinese leadership for imparting some momentum to the Special Representative-level talks, which have gone through 11 rounds and made very slow progress. National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan and Executive Vice Minister Bai Bingguo have been entrusted with the task of settling “at an early date … an appropriate framework for a final package settlement covering all sectors of the India-China boundary.” This they must achieve on the template of the Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of India-China Boundary Question signed in April 2005.

Nobody seriously expects the United Progressive Alliance government to pull out of its hat, before its elected term is over, a final package settlement of this highly sensitive question that has eluded a solution for more than half a century. What has been clear from the time of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s breakthrough visit to China in December 1988 is that a boundary settlement can come only through give and take, by whatever name called. ‘Giving’ large areas of territory held, or agreeing to significant transfers of population across the line of actual control (LAC), will not be politically feasible in either country. Considering the seeming intractability of this dispute ‘left over by history,’ the creative breakthrough was the political accord reached during the 1988 visit on the impermissibility of using force to alter the status quo along the LAC. This accord was subsequently formalised and firmed up and, in the words of the 2006 Joint Declaration, “pending resolution of the boundary question, both sides shall maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas in accordance with the agreements of 1993, 1996 and 2003.”

Any realistic approach needs to be patient with the pace of progress in the boundary talks. However, the exercise cannot be allowed to drift or meander, without political aim or focus, as that would lead to a loss of popular confidence in the exercise. Thus Dr. Singh has a delicate job on his hands as he attempts to persuade his top Chinese interlocutors to join him in imparting pace and élan to the boundary negotiations. A more immediate practical task is to find ways to better manage the LAC so that ‘incursions’ by the armed forces of either side across what the other side sees as the precise LAC are minimised and, if possible, ruled out.

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