Continuity on China front

The two Special Representatives on the Sino-Indian border question will have their third meeting in July. Although dates have not been confi...

The two Special Representatives on the Sino-Indian border question will have their third meeting in July. Although dates have not been confirmed, National Security Adviser J N Dixit will play host to his counterpart Dai Bingguo, perhaps in the latter half of the month. It had been earlier decided, even before the elections, to hold the third round on May 25-26, a measure of the trust and faith Beijing had developed in the Vajpayee government on this score. By retaining the institution of the Special Representative, the Congress Government has signalled continuity and graceful acknowledgement of the BJP8217;s decision to settle a lingering dispute that has defied both ideology and intellect for the last four decades.

Clearly, the Congress8217;s karma must be quite extraordinary, to have stolen the opportunity to settle both China and Pakistan from right under the nose of the BJP. Additionally, Manmohan Singh8217;s government need hardly worry that the Left parties will raise a big stink about possible path-breaking initiatives it may need to take on the boundary issue. China is after all a brotherly country, and the Left parties maintain close ties. Interestingly, after ex-PM Vajpayee8217;s visit to China a year ago, in which India for the first time acknowledged the reality on the ground that the Tibet Autonomous Region was a part of the PRC, a group of Left ideologues made a visit to Tibet.

Delhi waits, watches Sharon

India8217;s silence on Israeli PM Ariel Sharon8217;s promise to disengage from Gaza, passed within his Cabinet just over a week ago, hasn8217;t drawn any comments from New Delhi. Perhaps the silence is an indication of India8217;s wait-and-see approach with Tel Aviv, considering that Sharon had passed a similar plan about six weeks ago, which came rapidly apart when the PM8217;s Likud party rejected the move in a referendum. India wants now to see whether Sharon will put his money where his mouth is8212;by persuading the Jewish settlers to leave, even if they have to give them large sums of money to do so.

Meanwhile, notwithstanding his own publicly critical statements on Israel, External Affairs minister K Natwar Singh8217;s message to Tel Aviv has been that the established contacts will continue. Certainly, New Delhi doesn8217;t want to give up the top-class defence relationship it has established with Israel. From sensors on the fence that India has built on the LoC to a 15 per cent advance it has paid for the AWAC system, New Delhi is getting arms no other country would have ever dreamt of giving it. The unhappiness with Tel Aviv, then, seems to be in the way Sharon is handling the Palestinian question. From the bloody massacre of Palestinians, including children, in Rafah a month ago to the Gaza withdrawal, Congress sources say they hope Sharon will also win 8216;8216;hearts and minds8217;8217; even as he battles terrorism.

The Sens and sensibility

Ronen Sen8217;s appointment as Ambassador to the US is another notch in his fine career. Evidently, he8217;s the first diplomat since Vijaylakshmi Pandit to have been India8217;s ambassador to the Big Three, namely Moscow, London and the US. Interestingly, Sen was also the last envoy to have represented India when the capital of Germany was in Bonn and the first to do so in the old melting-pot of Europe, Berlin.

Then there8217;s Nirupam Sen8212;like Ronen Sen, a Russian-speaking officer8212;who will now be India8217;s permanent representative at the UN in New York. Although Sen has little or no multilateral experience, his fine intellect won him accolades in Sri Lanka, where he persuaded all the parties to finally grant the million or so plantation Tamils8217; citizenship. These stateless people of Indian origin, amongst the poorest of poor Sri Lankans, living in abject condition, had been refused documents since Colombo became independent in 19488212;as a result of which many returned home. But many stayed and sought to be politically united8212;but then the LTTE murdered Rajiv Gandhi and the Indian Tamils got buried in the blue yonder. Sen resurrected it, in the midst of other sexier stories in Colombo, and quietly got the Sri Lankan parliament to pass the citizenship Act.

Next round of Indo-Pak talks

India and Pakistan kick off their renewed dialogue later this week with a set of talks on nuclear confidence-building measures. The Pakistan side is led by Tariq Usman Haidar, a student of St Stephens college in 1971, when his father was Pakistan8217;s high commissioner to India. This is unlike another occasion in the late 8217;90s, when New Delhi did not renew the visa of the son of a Pakistani diplomat in Delhi. The Foreign Office had never invoked such an extreme measure, even at the height of the 1971 war.

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Over the rest of June and all of July, Indian and Pakistani officials are likely to keep up the tempo of their meeting. Independent interactions on the remaining six issues of the Composite Dialogue, such as Siachen, Sir Creek, Tulbul/Wullar barrage, trade and economic interaction and people-to-people contacts will be discussed. Among them the gas pipeline from Iran to India, via Pakistan, and the return of Jinnah House to Islamabad.