October 1, 2002	Tuesday	Rajab 23, 1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

NEW DELHI, Sept 30: India briefed China on Monday on its relations with Pakistan while Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, eyeing prospects ahead after the controversial polls in Kashmir, prepared to discuss the matter with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in mid-October in London, news reports said.

While Vajpayee’s proposed meeting with Blair, preceded by a “summit” with the European Union, appeared to indicate prospects of easier relations with Pakistan, in Washington Indian Finance Minister Jaswant was holding forth on India’s right to a pre-emptive strike against its perceived foe.

“The situation in Jammu and Kashmir is at a turning point. I am confident that the state will return to normalcy like Punjab,” Vajpee told a meeting of police chiefs in New Delhi.

“We had promised to hold free and fair elections and the polling in the first two phases has been good. There was a fear psychosis created with the killings of political activists. However, people of the state have braved all this,” he added.

“The prime minister also said that Pakistan must be held accountable for continuing to sponsor terrorism in India. Those who continue to support it (terrorism) will doubtlessly get isolated from the rest of humanity,” Star News reported, quoted him.

Vajpayee said India would intensify diplomatic initiatives to remind the leading nations of the international coalition that they must redeem their pledge to combat and defeat terrorism everywhere, irrespective of the cause it espouses.

Stressing that Indian security forces had made steady advances on all fronts to fight terrorism, Vajpee said: “This has made Pakistan grow desperate. And desperation is leading it to become more and more dastardly in its losing war of terrorism against India”.

Meanwhile, India and China concluded the third round of their security dialogue during which they discussed India-Pakistan relations too, Press Trust of India quoted officials as saying in Beijing.

“The dialogue consisted of an overview of the current international security situation, including the campaign against terrorism, introduction of each other’s national defence policies, various issues related to regional security and cooperation,” PTI quoted a senior official as saying.

“We didn’t go into the details of the India- Pakistan tension,” he said, emphasising that the third round has led to better understanding. “Both sides adopted a forward-looking approach to the dialogue.”

PTI quoted former foreign minister Jaswant Singh as saying in Washington on Sunday: “Pre-emption or prevention is inherent in deterrence. Where there is deterrence there is pre-emption.”

“The same thing is there in Article 51 of the UN Charter which calls it ‘the right of self-defence’,” Singh said.

Singh, who was attending the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF, met US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Director of Policy Planning, Richard Haas.

Singh said he discussed the “doctrine” of pre-emption or prevention with the American leaders and decided it was more an appropriate issue for academic discussion than for a press conference.

“Every nation has that right (of pre-emption). It is not the prerogative of any one country,” Singh said. “Pre-emption is the right of any nation to prevent injury to itself. Deterring an enemy from attacking you is inherent in Article 51 of the UN Charter. That is now becoming a complex academic discussion,” Singh added.

The finance minister said he had discussed the evolving situation in Iraq and the Middle East with US leaders at length.

India’s Oil Minister Ram Naik meanwhile said he was considering establishing a 3-4 months oil stockpile on the lines of the United States.

“Recent experience has led us to believe that India needs strategic oil reserves. We are studying the reserves maintained by countries like US and Japan to guide our policy on the matter,” Naik said on Monday.

At present, India doesn’t maintain any strategic reserves but oil companies have tankage to store about 15-days of crude oil requirement and 45 days of petroleum product, he said.

On the other hand, US maintains crude oil reserves that could meet country’s oil requirement for 161 days.

Naik was quoted by rediff.com as saying that India had enough energy supplies to cope with emergency situations such as wars or tensions with Pakistan.

The idea of holding strategic reserves is being explored in light of past experience when international crude prices shot up on account of factors other than ‘market governed’, he said.