China may extend conditional support to India: Reports

December 17, 2004
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In what could be a major development in the relations between two immediate neighbours of Nepal, Chinese foreign policy experts have said China may support India’s bid to secure a seat in the expanded Security Council provided it assured that it would ensure stability in South Asia and have friendly ties with neighbors, reports said.

“India is a country of over one billion people. We have to admit that India has some claim to a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. China has actually said that it understands the Indian wish for a permanent seat in the Security Council,” Li Shaoxian, vice-president of an influential Chinese think-tank, China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), told Pakistani journalists who are accompanying Premier Shaukat Aziz, Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper, reported Friday.

The daily quoted another Chinese expert, Li Wei—director at CICIR– as saying that India required to fulfill “three requirements” before putting forward its claim. They are: India should ensure stability in South Asia, have friendly relations with its neighbors and should contribute towards world peace. The UN reforms figured prominently in the talks between Aziz and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing, reports said.

Li quoted the Indian foreign minister as saying recently that if India got a seat in the Security Council without a right of veto, it would not accept it. “If India sticks to this position, I don’t see India becoming a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council any time soon,” he said.

At present there are only five permanent members of the UN Security Council including the US, United Kingdom, Russian Federation, France and China.

Answering a question, the vice-president of CICIR, Li Shaoxian, said that Beijing would not use fast increasing trade volume with India as a “tool to resolve disputes between New Delhi and Islamabad.” China’s trade volume with India is nearly four times as high as its trade with Pakistan.

Li said that the Chinese government backed the peace initiatives taken recently by President Pervez Musharraf. An aide to the CICIR vice-president argued that the difference in China’s trade volumes with India and Pakistan was due to their populations and market sizes. However, the on-going peace talks between Islamabad and New Delhi were an encouraging sign, he said.

The Chinese government appreciated new suggestions announced by President Musharraf for the resolution of the Kashmir issue. Similarly, Beijing has also called for a new thinking in New Delhi on this thorny issue,” he explained.

Shedding light on the close relationship between Pakistan and China, he recalled that when two years ago President Musharraf had made a stopover in Beijing, the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, had asked him to take a couple of fresh initiatives on Kashmir.

A Track II conference, organized by Pugwash conferences—an international think tank– to help resolve the Kashmir issue concluded in Kathmandu this week.