Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met US President Barack Obama to ‘dissolve some concerns’ over Indo-Pak relations, an opinion piece in the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, People’s Daily, has said.

In a comment on Singh’s Washington visit, the piece says that India fears that it is a ‘variable factor’ in the US plan to counter terror in South Asia and the visit was intended ‘precisely’ to address concerns in its relations with Pakistan.

“As a matter of fact, public opinions however deem that such a vital, high-profile reception of the Indian Prime Minister by Washington D.C. was intended precisely to dissolve some concerns for Indian-Pakistan relations,” the opinion piece, which appeared in the People’s Daily on Saturday, said.

The daily says that since Obama assumed presidency in January, Pakistan has occupied a ‘position of crucial importance’ in the South Asia policy of the US and India fears that its role would be reduced to a mere regional one as it would get tangled in ‘complex geopolitical equations’.

It also pokes fun at the Indian role in the region by saying that New Delhi has come to realise that its involvement is needed only to ease relations with Pakistan. “Indian strategists, however, come to realise that the US hinges on Pakistan and Afghanistan instead of India in counter-terrorism in South Asia, and India’s involvement in the US efforts to fight terrorism is devised only to ease the strained relations between India and Pakistan,” it says.

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