M D Nalapat
During
the last quarter of 2010, the Heads of Government of all the P-5
(Permanent Five in UN Security Council) will have visited India. The
first to land in Delhi was UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who made an
excellent impression in India, in contrast to some of his predecessors.
Next followed US President Barack Obama, who created history by setting
in stone the foundations laid by George W Bush of a US-India alliance.
Next has come President Sarkozy of France, a country that even during
the dark days of the Clinton administration was friendly to India (in
contrast to the UK, which followed the Clinton line as faithfully as a
poodle). On December 15,Premier Wen Jiabao of China comes calling,
followed a week later by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev.
Bill Clinton was faithful to the State Department rule that India must always be equated with Pakistan, and visited Islamabad after taking off from Delhi. However, of the five P-5 leaders coming to India, only Premier Wen Jiabao of China is following this script. He will visit Pakistan after India, thereby ensuring that Islamabad enjoys parity with Delhi in his travels. In other matters as well, China differs from Russia, the UK, France and the US on its India policy. It is the only power within the five that has yet to endorse India as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the reason being that it does not want to seem as though Beijing is favouring Delhi over Islamabad, its all-weather friend since the time of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s. On Kashmir, Beijing has continued with the line once followed by the US and the UK (but never by Russia and seldom by France) that India should make substantial concessions to Pakistan for the sake of peace. Several in South Block regard an Indo-Pakistan peace as being of much greater benefit to Islamabad than to Delhi, and hence believe that a lot of the sacrifices should be made by Pakistan. This is clearly not China’s view. Policymakers here (and this column is are clear that as the bigger country, India should concede more - much more - than Pakistan. This Pakistan-oriented view is particularly strong within the Peoples Liberation Army, which considers the Pakistan, Myanmarese and North Korean militaries as being their closest allies, with India’s military remaining a concern rather than a source for joy.
