New Delhi, Beijing working together to ban Pak terrorists

As external affairs minister S M Krishna travels to Beijing on Tuesday for talks till April 8 with his counterpart, Yang Jiechi, highly placed sources in the establishment confirmed that India and China have been in talks for some time to ban Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, Abdul Rehman Makki of the Jamaat-ud Dawa and Azam Cheema of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, under the aforesaid UN Security Council resolutions. The sources said Delhi was very keen that these three be added to the list of four who were named when their organisation, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, was banned by the UN Security Council in December 2008, a month after the Mumbai terror attacks.

The four persons banned by the UNSC in December 2008 were Hafiz Saeed, head of the JuD, Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, Haji Muhammed Ashraf, JuD chief of finance, and India-born Mahmoud Muhammed Ahmed Bahaziq, a financier of the JuD. At the time, the US, under heavy pressure from India, moved the UNSC under Resolution 1267, demonstrating that the Jamaat ud Dawa was linked to the Al Qaeda. China did not stand in the way of the banning.

Buoyed by its success, India has for some months been working on adding Azhar, Makki and Cheema to the list. While the US, France and Russia were supportive, Britain raised some queries, then dropped these. China continued to hold out, however, seeking "more information and evidence" that these three terrorists were actually "linked to the Al Qaeda". These are now being provided by Delhi, which seems hopeful the matter would soon reach culmination.

The establishment sources did not say whether or not Beijing would provide assurances during Krishna's visit or later. Clearly, the matter is being kept under wraps at the highest levels.

Makki, the head of Jamaat-ud Dawa's political wing and a brother-in-law of JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, has been on the Indian radar for some time. His latest speech in the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir capital, Muzaffarabad, on February 4 spoke of targeting Indian cities, including Pune and Kanpur.

Azam Cheema, said to be the Lashkar-e-Toiba intelligence chief, is an accused in the Mumbai serial train blasts of 2007, while Masood Azhar, founder of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, was one of three handed back to the hijackers of the IC-814 aircraft in December 2001 in Kandahar, soon after which he escaped into Pakistan. Both Cheema and Azhar are said to be based in Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

Krishna, who will call on Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, is likely to seek assurance on this count, as well as on the subject of the stapled visas for Indians hailing from Jammu & Kashmir. Officials briefing the press on Saturday said, unlike the disputed nature of the Line of Actual Control around which parts of Arunachal Pradesh could be contested, the matter of giving different visas to residents from Jammu & Kashmir "hit at the core of territorial integrity and sovereignty" of India.

Briefings by two sets of senior government officials over the past two days have been full of warm and fulsome rhetoric about the growing Sino-Indian relationship, a far and somewhat surprising cry from the shrillness that has dominated the public discourse in the past couple of years since the signature on the Indo-US nuclear deal.

While China was one of the last holdouts at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Beijing finally assented to the nuclear deal, following which Yang Jiechi came to Delhi in an attempt to smoothen the rough edges that had developed in the relationship.

Krishna's visit to Beijing this week, certainly to celebrate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries--to be inaugurated by a dance-drama by the Manipuri icon Ratan Thiyam's Uttara Priyadarshi on April 7, on the connections that the Buddha created between India and the erstwhile Middle Kingdom several centuries ago--and to take forward foreign minister-level discussions, seems animated by the "Copenhagen effect". Which is, to look for common ground on issues so far dominated by divergence.

Officials pointed out that January's defence dialogue picked up the thread from two years ago, the 8th joint economic group meet took place recently after four years and that President Pratibha Patil would visit China this year after a full decade. "The Chinese have promised to address Indian concerns, especially in removing non-tariff barriers against Indian interests, especially in information technology and IT-enabled services, in pharmaceuticals, basmati rice, Indian movies and music, which are extremely popular in China," the sources said.

They said the official dialogue between the two sides was "so absolutely free and frank that it would surprise anybody," and both officialdoms often discussed "even the most sensitive subjects very openly". This included the Pakistan question, including Chinese projects in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, while the Indian side lent a patient ear to China's worries over the active Tibetan community in India.

Analysts pointed out that China was one country which understood and respected the nature of power, that the Indo-US nuclear deal had propelled Delhi into a new international league and, even more significantly, that India had continued to grow at a dynamic 6.9 per cent (China grew by around 8.7 per cent) over the last two years when the rest of the world was in significant recession.

"The Chinese certainly sat up and took notice of the Indo-US nuclear deal, but what has impressed them even more was India's ability to grow at a sustained pace, without much FDI and high technology transfers. Moreover, in an increasingly multi-polar world, just as at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, Beijing realised that they must coordinate strategies in counter-terrorism, multi-polarity and energy security," said Srikant Kondapalli, professor of Chinese studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Kondapalli noted out that India's differences with the current Obama administration were also growing, whether in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, in the Doha Round or in climate change.

"For the first time in several years, India is looking at creating greater space for itself, between the great powers. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, there is enough space for both India and China in Asia," Kondapalli added.