NEW DELHI, Oct 11: Indian External Affairs Minister Mr Jaswant Singh last week put off his visit to Beijing, which had been planned for later this month.

The postponement of Mr Jaswant Singh’s visit was announced over the weekend and it was stated that he had taken this decision in view of the military action in Afghanistan.

Apparently to prevent the possibility of a misperception of his decision, Mr Singh later had an extended discussion with his Chinese counterpart Mr Tang Jiaxuan and in the course of the dialogue which extended for about fifty minutes discussed with him virtually the entire gamut of the talks agenda, which would have taken place during his visit.

As this would have been the first occasion for the two to exchange views on the Afghan situation, Mr Singh sought to know from Mr Tang, details of China’s views. So far, this had not been made clear and all that was known was that Beijing had not opposed the American action in Afghanistan.

Rather interestingly, Mr Singh’s conversation with Mr Tang also covered the fall out of the situation in South Asia particularly as it impacted the situation in China’s Xinjiang province where the fundamentalist opinion has shown signs of getting reactivated. In this context, Mr Tang is believed to have said that Beijing was distancing itself from all those instigating fundamentalist views.

In expressing his views in this context, Mr Tang was explicitly against the support being extended to such a stream in Xinjiang province. He had said this in the context of Mr Singh mentioning the assistance which was being extended to terrorist elements in Kashmir. There was a reference to the recent Srinagar attacks on the assembly buildings there.

In the assessment of the overall situation in south Asia, Mr Singh appears to have noted the changes in Pakistan that General Musharraf had brought about in the ruling hierarchy.

He appears to have been quite sanguine of the impact of the emerging situation, particularly as the US had sought to bring to bear an even-handed approach to the question of cross-border terrorism and more particularly was appreciative of the statements of General Musharraf, concerning the attack on Srinagar as a terrorist attack which was unacceptable to Pakistan.

Mr Tang and Mr Singh also had a brief review of the border talks at the official level between the two countries. So far three meetings had taken place since the exchange of maps of the middle sector in November last year. The working group had decided to send in their reports to the full meeting of the working group, and the next meeting of the group is to be held in Beijing in December.

Significantly, the two foreign ministers have decided that the boundary dispute should not veto cooperation in other areas between the two countries, and that the two sides should pursue their efforts to come closer to each other.

This is borne out by the commonality of their respective approaches on a number of issues. For instance, the two countries had recently agreed on a military exchange programme. These exchanges will entail the visit of military officials of the rank of colonels to the National Defence Academy in China.

In following this programme, however, there is one difficulty in that India does not have an institution similar to the NDA in China, to which Chinese counterparts could be invited, although there have been some steps to create an institution which would be utilised for the purpose.