No joint statement when Modi meets Xi

Smita Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 24

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to Wuhan City in central China on Friday for a first informal summit meeting with President Xi Jinping, there will be no set agenda for discussions, no burden of producing a joint statement and no pre-negotiated outcome document.

Unlike in a formal summit meeting, delegations from both sides will not be seated across the table with listed items to talk about. Rather in Wuhan City, the erstwhile summer retreat of Chairman Mao Zedong located on Yangtze River, PM Modi and Xi will have a few one-on-one sessions on April 27 and 28. With no note takers, the objective for the two top leaders will be to have a political dialogue to understand each other’s domestic policy intentions and how it shapes the external policy.

“The objective is to have communication at highest level to understand perspective that each has of the other in domestic and foreign policy. So, discussions are to be overarching, broad-based and not specific in terms of issues,” said a source.

The Tribune has learnt that the major bilateral sticking points in relations, including Chinese objection to India’s membership bid of NSG (Nuclear Suppliers’ Group) or veto shielding of terror mastermind Masood Azhar in the Security Council, are unlikely to be raised by PM Modi during his one-on-one talks.

India also currently maintains that post-mutual disengagement between Indian and Chinese militaries at the Doklam tri-junction with Bhutan, ‘there has been no change in face off site or vicinity’ contrary to media reports, and the issue will not be a spoiler in the Wuhan talks. “Discussions will focus on positives in relations without avoiding differences, even as we acknowledge the irritants,” the source added.

First proposed in Xiamen at the BRICS summit last September, subsequent decision was taken to hold the informal meeting separately instead of along the sidelines of upcoming SCO summit in Qingdao in June where time would be limited between sessions.

India’s stand on Dalai Lama, Tibet ‘unchanged’ 

India has not changed its position on Tibet and the Dalai Lama, sources said. “Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale’s letter to the Cabinet Secretary, advising top ministers and government faces to stay away from official functions of the Dalai Lama that got leaked in the media was not meant to be some signal to China,” he said. Instead, the source stressed that main function lined up by the Central Tibetan Administration to mark 60th year of the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India, had political overtones about which Delhi had certain reservations.