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After the launch of his latest book -- Deadly embrace: Pakistan, America, and the future of global jihad -- Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency official and foreign policy adviser to Obama, while appreciating that the summit between Obama and Hu would be focused on US-China bilateral agenda, argued that this foreign policy dimension to the talks was critical if Washington was to prevent the South Asia region from exploding.
Riedel told rediff.com, "Since I believe there is no issue more important for American foreign policy than helping Pakistan, bringing it up with China, which is Pakistan's chief arms supplier and its most reliable ally over the last 50 years, is a necessity. I hope the president will do that."
Acknowledging that China too has a stake in Kashmir, Riedel, currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, said, "China can be a force in encouraging India and Pakistan to try to open up trade links, transit links, normalise their relationship, and then deal with the fundamental issues that have divided them for so many years."
"Let's start with the little and move to the big. China, with the world's fastest-growing economy, certainly has to be a part of that process," he added.