Vajpayee readies for China visit

Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee has decided to brush aside the doomsday scenario being painted over the SARS threat in China in favour of a vis...

Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee has decided to brush aside the doomsday scenario being painted over the SARS threat in China in favour of a visit to the Middle Kingdom at the end of June.

The decision to undertake a prime ministerial visit to China, the first in a decade, was finalised during the PM’s short vacation in Manali last week. And short of there being ‘‘great disharmony under the heavens’’, as the Chinese are wont to describe a revivified SARS attack, Vajpayee will be in Beijing at the end of next month.

As soon as next week, though, in St Petersburg, Russia, the PM will meet new Chinese President Hu Jintao, sources confirmed, setting into motion once again the elaborate and highly stylised drama between Asia’s largest powers.

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The PM and Comrade Hu will again have the opportunity for an encounter at the extended G-8 plus meeting in Evian, France, next week where the leaders of India, China, Brazil and Mexico have also been invited.

With Beijing believed to have signalled to Pakistan, its ‘‘all-weather friend’’, the desirability of putting Kashmir on the back-burner in talks with India, Vajpayee’s trip is already being talked of as a major effort to jog the relationship with Beijing along in the new century.

From further clarification of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) to the promotion of trade to a survey of the Brahmaputra waters, to talks on the Tibetan issue, the visit is likely to result in major initiatives between the two sides.

Under the circumstances, New Delhi decided that if the PM and Hu were to get together twice over within the space of seven days in Europe, the danger of contracting SARS in Beijing could hardly be much higher. Moreover, with spitting banned in China and the PM’s party housed in the beautiful, secure and highly sanitised environs of the Communist Party Diaoyutai guest houses in Beijing, the threat to the Indian delegation is not believed to be significant.

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Preparations for the PM’s trip are on in full swing in the Foreign Office, and the visit of India’s Ambassador to China Shiv Shanker Menon here over the next couple of days is likely to intensify the process.

Menon is likely to stay on for the PM’s visit, it is learnt, with putative ambassador to China Nalin Surie only moving to his new job after the visit.

The question of further clarifying the LAC will be the centrepiece of the PM’s visit, considering New Delhi and Beijing were unable to exchange maps of the western sector at the last Joint Working Group in Delhi in November. Vajpayee’s visit will follow on from the agreement on the maintenance of peace on the border signed when P.V. Narasimha Rao travelled to Beijing in 1993. That was the last time an Indian PM visited China.