It may not be correct to be too optimistic about the meeting held between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese premier Wen Jiao Bao on the sidelines of the Fourth East Asia Summit in Thailand. Your editorial ‘From tantrums to tranquility’ (October 27) tells that while the Singh-Wen meeting was front-page news in India, it hardly secured any attention in the Chinese media. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did well in raising the issues like territorial disputes, Chinese incursions, trans-border river disputes, the dam being built by Beijing across the Brahmaputra and telling Wen that the Dalai Lama is a religious leader and honoured guest of India and government had no intention of blocking his proposed visit to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. Your advice to China for conducting a normal dialogue with the Dalai Lama is well placed but is unlikely to be acted upon by China.
Moreover, you are right in saying that since India and China have the urgent task of economic development at home and have to tackle the difficult global economic situation, neither should want deterioration in the bilateral relationship. But the series of provocation by the Chinese show they aren’t really worried about deterioration in the bilateral relationship.
M C Joshi, Lucknow
