Beijing’s carpet for Fernandes: now he sees a positive red

Though the dates for the visit are still to be finalised—‘‘at mutual convenience’’—Fernandes is expected to go to Beijing in the middle of November after the change of guard takes place there.

The visit, sources in the Government say, will be for about a week. Fernandes, a friend of Tibet who has publicly espoused the Tibetan cause even as Defence Minister, has resorted to China-bashing frequently in the past.

Two years ago, when BBC journalist Humphrey Hawksley’s book Dragon Fire, a work of fiction depicting a nuclear war between India and China in 2007, hit the stands, Fernandes had reportedly expressed the hope that people would not dismiss the book as one more work of fiction.

His various statements in 1998, soon after he became Defence Minister, had raised eyebrows in South Block. For instance, even as the Chinese chief of army staff was expected in New Delhi, in April 1998, Fernandes declared that China was the mother of Ghauri, fired by Pakistan, and raised the threat about Chinese encirclement of India.

Initially, the Chinese had exercised restraint in their statements after India conducted its first round of nuclear tests in May 1998. But it came out with a strongly worded reaction after Fernandes’s statements and Prime Minister Vajpayee’s letter to the then US President Bill Clinton that China posed a threat to India.

Fernandes also launched an atack on China for intruding into Indian territory to build a helipad in Arunachal Pradesh, which did not go down well with it.

Over the years, the Chinese have protested that Tibetans in India were engaged in political activity and they have discerned Fernandes’s encouragement to these groups.

But now Beijing has held out an olive branch to Fernandes and he has accepted it. It is learnt that the Prime Minsiter may not visit China in the near future, which had earlier been on the cards.