India's Vajpayee to begin 6-day visit to China on Sun

Asian Political News, June 24, 2003

BEIJING, June 20 Kyodo

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will begin a six-day visit to China on Sunday designed to boost economic ties between the world's two most populous countries and prevent a lingering border dispute from clouding bilateral relations.

Making the first visit to China by an Indian premier in a decade, Vajpayee is scheduled to meet Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday.

Wen and other Chinese leaders due to meet Vajpayee, including President Hu Jintao, are likely to tactfully avoid mentioning Vajpayee's identification of China as a possible future military threat when India conducted surprise nuclear weapon tests in 1998.

At the time, Vajpayee also accused China of helping Pakistan develop a nuclear capability, allowing Pakistan to then follow up by testing its own atomic bomb.

While Vajpayee's visit is intended to shore up China's relations with India, it will not affect China's ''traditional friendship'' with Pakistan, according to a senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official who wished to remain anonymous.

''On the other hand, the good relations between China and Pakistan are also not targeted at any third country,'' he added.

The Indian prime minister is likely to talk with his Chinese hosts about their nations' ''complicated and sensitive'' territorial dispute, but lingering differences will not be allowed to mar the improvement of Sino-Indian ties, the official said.

China and India have been unable to resolve their differences over the disputed territory, despite numerous diplomatic discussions following their brief but bloody border war in 1962, followed by a limited clash across the disputed border area in 1986.

India says China still holds 38,000 square kilometers of its territory at Aksai Chin in Kashmir. China lays claim to 90,000 square km of land in India's far eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Dismissing another potential source of friction between China and India, the official said the presence of the government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's leader, in India's Dharamsala area does not pose a problem.

''The Indian government has made a commitment that Tibet is part of China, and the Indian government will not allow the Dalai Lama to conduct political activities against China in India,'' he said.

While trade between China and India has expanded 20-fold during the past decade to reach its present $5 billion level, there is still ''great potential'' for the enhancement of bilateral, economic ties, he said.

''The business communities of the two countries don't know each other very well,'' the official added.

After meeting with top leaders in Beijing, Vajpayee is due to travel to the ancient city of Luoyang in northern Hebei Province and to Shanghai in the south.