Barely had the PM touched down in Delhi, when his principal aide and confidante Brajesh Mishra was catching the flight to Beijing for the second round of talks on the border issue. Mishra was actually supposed to go around Christmas and before the SAARC summit to Pakistan — where he was also to have briefed the Chinese leadership about the PM’s intended peace moves with the General — but his interlocutor Dai Bingguo was involved in his own set of six-nation talks on North Korea, on which Beijing has voluntarily taken a lead role. No one missed the significance of the message sent by China and read out at the SAARC inaugural — the only country to have received this privilege — wishing SAARC the best. Beijing continued to loom large in Islamabad. Still, Mishra’s delegation to Beijing has an unusual member on board. Additional Secretary Nirupama Rao (better known as a former spokesperson), said to be India’s expert on the Sino-Indian border tangle, has been co-opted to be part of Mishra’s hand-picked team, from the administration job she currently holds. Interestingly, Rao started off in the Foreign Service by opting for the German language, but later spent eight years on the China desk studying the complexities of the Middle Kingdom. Cong hand in China, Pak Clearly, the PM seems determined to deliver India from its obsessions with both Pakistan and China, but why does Congress president Sonia Gandhi seem equally determined not to take credit for her party — and family’s — involvement with both these major stories? The month of December came and went, with nary a sound from the cavernous Congress over how it was Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing 15 years ago that reset the ball rolling over a breakthrough on the border issue. It was Gandhi who picked up from Vajpayee’s aborted visit to China in 1979 and told Deng Xiaoping that India and China must learn to come to terms with their past history. Many a former diplomat perfectly acquainted with the salubrious lawns of Delhi’s IIC will tell you stories about all those days and nights when the MEA prepared for Rajiv’s China visit with ‘‘military, painstaking detail’’. Then there’s Pakistan. A visit to the Daman-i-Koh (translated as ‘‘apron of the mountains’’) restaurant complex mid-way up the Margalla hills that loom large over Islamabad, brings back memories of Rajiv Gandhi’s visit here in December 1989 for the SAARC summit. Group photos of a bygone era — Rajiv charmingly smiling at Benazir Bhutto, while JRJ of Sri Lanka and King Jigme Singye Wangchuk of Bhutan frontally face the camera — capture the spirit of an idealistic, can-do age — Rajiv and Benazir, in fact, also laid the foundation of a deal on Siachen. The Congress has such a long historical memory, but will someone please tell Mrs G about it? Blair’s men come calling If it’s January, it must be the season for top British politicians — although Foreign Secretary Jack Straw will stretch the calendar by arriving in early February for a bilateral visit, at the end of which he’s even planning a little holiday down south. In ten days’ time then, the new British National Security Advisor, Nigel Sheinwald, will be here to continue his dialogue with his counterpart Brajesh Mishra. Towards the end of January, Home Secretary David Blunkett arrives for a pow-wow with Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, after which word is that he will proceed onwards to Pakistan. Everything is on the agenda, from terrorism to outsourcing, from IT to a pardon for incarcerated British prisoner Peter Bleach. Fact is, India’s one of the four focus countries identified by London over the next decade — the others are Russia, China and Japan — in its new foreign policy doctrine enunciated only a month or so ago, which are expected to make a mark on the world stage. The document, drawn up by the British Foreign Office, makes for a fascinating read, especially since there’s considerable soul-searching involved. Wonder if the MEA’s Policy Planning division, supposed to provide a long-term perspective to New Delhi’s vision thing, could take a suitable leaf out of the London book. Winds of change in MEA Former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal merely tinkered with the names of the divisions the MEA is made up of (changing EE for ‘‘Eastern Europe’’ to CEE for ‘‘Central and Eastern Europe’’), but the current dispensation’s plans for restructuring the Foreign Office are far more ambitious. Led by External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha and Foreign Secretary Shashank, the idea seems to bifurcate gargantuan pieces of territory into more manageable divisions, which joint secretaries can then thoroughly get their teeth into. The Latin American Countries’ (LAC) desk, for example, has some 20-odd countries, the Africas’ division has 50-odd nations, while the aforesaid CEE has 22 countries (Russia, the CIS and all of central Europe). It’s often impossible to focus on the wily charms of Vladimir Putin when a delegation from Slovenia’s landing up in the next 24 hours. By the way things are going, the restructuring could take place anytime soon.
