Beijing thaw

: In nudging Communist China to acknowledge India’s standing as a de facto nuclear weapon state and agree on bilateral civilian atomic energy cooperation, Dr Manmohan Singh has exceeded all expectations about his maiden visit to Beijing as India’s prime minister. The seemingly simple joint formulation in Beijing on Monday — “as two countries with advanced scientific capabilities, the two sides pledge to promote bilateral cooperation in civil nuclear energy, consistent with their respective international commitments” — marks an important political triumph for Dr Singh. The new warmth he has generated with the Chinese leaders, marked by an unprecedented joint declaration on the shared vision between New Delhi and Beijing for the 21st century, should help get the Communist parties off his back at home. By injecting real strategic content into Sino-Indian relations, he has at once underwritten the enduring independence of India’s foreign policy and improved the prospects for the implementation of the nuclear deal with the United States.

To be sure, China’s proposed nuclear bonhomie with India is subject to its “international commitments”, a reference to the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the safeguards requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Until now, the CPM was either unable or unwilling to see that the Indo-US nuclear deal was in essence about facilitating New Delhi’s cooperation with the entire international community and not just Washington. That cooperation in turn needs an endorsement of the IAEA and the NSG. After China’s support for the Indo-US deal, it is only the CPM that stands between India and its nuclear energy future.