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Amid frosty ties, Chinese foreign minister on 3-day India visit
Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi will arrive on Friday for a three-day visit to take stock of the bilateral ties, even as New Delhi continues to work on the neighbour for its support for becoming a member of the nuclear suppliers group (NSG).
Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi will arrive on Friday for a three-day visit to take stock of the bilateral ties, even as New Delhi continues to work on the neighbour for its support for becoming a member of the nuclear suppliers group (NSG).
The visit comes amid bilateral tension between the two countries.
Wang will arrive in Goa, the venue of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in October, which President Xi Jingping will be attending. He will meet the local leadership including Governor Mridula Sinha and Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar. He is also scheduled to visit the BRICS venue.
On Saturday, he will hold talks with his counterpart Sushma Swaraj in New Delhi. He will also call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Significantly, Wang’s visit also comes after Chinese troops “transgressed” the land border and violated Indian air space in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand last month.
India is still engaged in discussions to get Beijing’s support to become a member of the NSG. China had stonewalled India’s bid for NSG membership at the plenary meeting of the 48-nation grouping in June on the ground that it was not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Indian officials said the NSG membership remains an important part of conversation between the two sides. “We are continuing with our efforts to be full member of the NSG. We are engaging the Chinese. This will figure again when he meets the Indian leadership,” an official told HT. India will also raise the issue of China scuttling its efforts for a UN designation of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar as a terrorist, sources said.
The two sides will also discuss economic cooperation, the forthcoming G-20 summit in China that Prime Minister Modi will be attending in September and people-to-people contacts. The South China sea issue will also come up for discussions.
It is significant that en-route to G 20 summit, Modi will be visiting Vietnam which is one of the countries involved in the South China Sea territorial dispute.
Earlier, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup had said the leaders will discuss various issues of mutual interest, including the upcoming multilateral meetings--the G-20 summit in China and the BRICS summit.
On whether India will raise the recent incident of transgression in Uttarakhand at the meeting, Swarup said, all international, regional and bilateral issues of mutual interest will be discussed.
But he pointed out there are mechanisms, including at army-to-army level, to take care of such incidents.