07 September 2004	Tuesday	21 Rajab 1425

NEW DELHI, Sept 6: India on Monday rejected the China Model for talks with Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute, official sources said.

They said Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh declined the offer by his counterpart, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, to escalate the Kashmir talks to "higher-level representatives" from both countries.

Mr Singh's argument was that good mechanisms were already in place to resolve the Kashmir issue. Later, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also reportedly told Mr Kasuri, when the latter called on him, that "we already have mechanisms to discuss Jammu and Kashmir and peace and security".

Those mechanisms were to be used more purposefully in future, the Indian rejoinder to Mr Kasuri said. Officials close to the talks said the China Model for India-Pakistan talks was supported by the dominant policy makers in India until recently, partly because they had hoped that it would help put the issue of Kashmir on the backburner.

The phrase derives its meaning and drift from the ongoing India-China talks on their boundary dispute, authored at the initiative of the present National Security Adviser Jyotindra Nath in September 1993, when he was the country's foreign secretary.

Mr Dixit is widely believed to have already met his Pakistani counterpart in Amritsar, although the meeting has not yet been officially acknowledged. The two also apparently struck a good chemistry. This was a follow-up on the meetings Mr Dixit's predecessor Mr Brajesh Mishra had with Pakistani counterpart Tariq Aziz, albeit less secretively.

Most analysts, including Pakistani and Indian officials, agree that quiet and patient diplomacy, characterized by the China Model, was a surer way to resolve intractable issues. Some of them said Monday's Indian response to what was only a rejigged version of New Delhi's own thesis, was puzzling.