Chinese talk

All eyes are on Chinese premier Zhu Rongji as he journeys across India through the rest of this week. A decade ago, when the last Chinese prime minister Li Peng came to town, the major story wracking the Indian sub-continent was still India and Pakistan. At the time, a group of Pakistani protesters were threatening to march across the Line of Control from Muzaffarabad in PoK. In the event, the march never took place since the marchers were arrested before they could reach the LoC.

Zhu Rongji’s travels this week has been preceded by another Indo-Pak story. It seems that Zhu, briefing local diplomats after the visit of General Musharraf to Beijing in early January, characterised Kashmir as ‘‘the core issue.’’ The report sent New Delhi into a major spin, since Beijing was believed to have totally bought the Pakistani line. A clarification was asked for, and received.

The Chinese totally debunked the report. Since there are no prepositions like ‘‘the’’ in Mandarin, the government was told, Zhu could never have used it in connection with Kashmir. Moreover, the Chinese premier had never used the word ‘‘core,’’ but only stated that it was ‘‘one’’ of the issues between New Delhi and Islamabad.

R-day guest

The President of Mauritius, Cassam Uteem, is India’s guest for this Republic Day, signalling a new engagement with Africa currently being contemplated by the MEA. Uteem belongs to the same party as Navin Ramgoolam, currently the leader of the Opposition back home. Poor Ramgoolam. PM Vajpayee’s Mauritius visit last March, expressly made to strengthen his hand — the PM’s speeches in Hindi in the middle of sugarcane country were received with the same enthusiasm as an eastern UP town — all came to naught, since Ramgoolam still lost the elections to his rival Anirudh Jugnauth.

Robin reinvented

Robin Raphel, the much-abused former pointperson for the subcontinent in the State Department in the early 1990s for going public with America’s refusal to recognise Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession to India, may yet return to New Delhi’s affections. It seems that, nearly a decade later, Raphel is a much-chastened person and seems to have practically given up the vision of an independent Kashmir — an idea that had gained much currency after the successful break-up of the Soviet Union.

It also appears that Raphel, in Chennai and Delhi recently as the guest of the Confederation of Indian Industries, now believes that the most practical solution for the India-Pakistan crisis is to convert the Line of Control into the International Boundary. Raphael said as much, much to the grim satisfaction of her Indian hosts. She also admitted that such a solution may not be to the liking of Islamabad.

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