Chinese Premier to address India's concerns during visit

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is expected to address some of India's key concerns like those on stapled visas for Jammu and Kashmir residents, its bid for permanent membership in UNSC and growing trade imbalance, to put strained bilateral ties back on track.

Wen will arrive in New Delhi tomorrow for a three day visit, a trip billed as a "significant event" by China.

The visit is taking place after elaborate rounds of talks at various levels starting with the candid meeting between Wen and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Hanoi in October this year, creating high expectations to remove some of the major irritants like stapled visas, which created furore in India.

Ahead of the visit, Chinese official media projected it on a positive light today with headlines like, "China has high expectations for Premier Wen's upcoming visit to India" and "India visit to help smoothen trade ties".

The visa issue resulted in India putting on hold the defence exchanges after rejection of visa to a top Indian General B S Jaswal on the ground that he headed troops in Jammu and Kashmir.
 
Ahead of the three day visit, Chinese officials too sounded upbeat on finding a solution to the visa row.
 
"We will not exclude the possibility of discussions on any issue. For the issues such as visas, I believe the working level staff will talk about it between our two countries," Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister, Hu Zhengyue, who briefed the media here about Wen's visit said.
 
Indications are that China has promised to find some solution and issued regular visas to some Kashmiris, indicating a roll back of its policy which started since 2008.
 
India has flagged off this issue in all the high level discussions in the recent months as it marked a significant China's stand amounted to taking sides favouring Pakistan on Kashmir issue, ending its neutral stand.
 
Officials here said Chinese leadership was concerned about implications of continuing the policy specially after getting the feed back from Zhou Yongkong, the politburo member of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, who recently visited New Delhi and ruling opposition parties, who in voice expressing concern over the policy.
 
If a satisfactory solution was found, Wen's visit would result in the resumption of defence exchanges, which China appeared keen, officials said.
 
The Chinese premier's visit is also significant as he is expected to elaborate on China's stand India's bid for permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council.
 
China was caught by surprise by US President Barrack Obama's announcement during his India trip fully backing India's aspirations to get the permanent seat.