Chinese envoy pitches for India-China-Pakistan trilateral meet

New Delhi

With India and Pakistan being made full members of theShanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Chinese Ambassador to India LuoZhaohui on Monday pitched the concept of an India-China-Pakistan trilateralmeeting under the SCO framework.

"Security cooperation is one of three pillars of theSCO," Luo said in his keynote speech at a seminar on "Beyond Wuhan:How far and fast can China-India relations go" organised by the ChineseEmbassy here.

"Some Indian friends suggested that China, India andPakistan may have some kind of trilateral cooperation under the SCO," hesaid.

"China, Russia and Mongolia already meet under the SCOframework. So, why not a China-India-Pakistan trilateral meeting?"

The SCO is an Eurasian inter-governmental organisation, thecreation of which was announced in 2001 in Shanghai by Kazakhstan, China,Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It was preceded by the ShanghaiFive mechanism.

India and Pakistan were granted full membership of the blocin June last year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpartattended the annual SCO Summit in Qingdao, China, this month as full membersfor the first time.

Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a bilateralmeeting on the sidelines of the Summit.

The meeting came over a month after the two leaders'historic informal summit on April 27-28 in Wuhan on the Chinese President'sinvitation when they pledged to keep the India-China border quiet andpersonally guide their respective armies to avert a Doklam-like militarystand-off in future.

In his speech on Monday, Luo said that in the Qingdaomeeting, both Modi and Xi focused on implementation of the consensus reached duringthe Wuhan informal summit.

"In Qingdao, the two leaders agreed to hold the secondround of informal summit next year. This is the most significant outcome of themeeting," he said. 

The Ambassador also said that China has taken note of Modi'skeynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore earlier this monthduring which he said that "Asia and the world will have a better futurewhen India and China work together in trust and confidence, sensitive to eachother's interests".

He said the Chinese Defence Minister and Minister for PublicSecurity will visit India while the Special Representatives' meeting on theboundary issue will be held in Beijing this year.

"The two Foreign Ministers (Sushma Swaraj of India andWang Yi of China) will co-chair the first meeting of high-levelpeople-to-people and cultural exchange mechanism," he said.

Stating that China will import more sugar, non-Basmati riceand high quality medicines from India to reduce the trade imbalance, Luo said thata new bilateral trade target has been set for $100 billion by 2022.

 "India agreed tofacilitate the establishment of Bank of China branch office in Mumbai," hesaid.

 "The two sidesagreed to share hydro-logical information concerning cross-border rivers andenhance connectivity in the region including the BCIM (Bangladesh, China,India, Myanmar) cooperation projects."

Referring to the decision taken during the Wuhan meeting fora India-China joint project in Afghanistan, Luo said this will start off with ajoint training programme for Afghan civil servants.   

He said that though both countries share a history offriendly interactiomns, there were pending boundary issues.

"From the perspective of domestic development, bothcountries are at the critical stage of economic development, deepening reformand advancing modernisation," the Ambassador said.

 He also shared thefields of priority with 5Cs to promote China-India relations: communication,cooperation, contacts, coordination and control.

"Besides the informal summits, the two leaders (Modiand Xi) agreed to maintain strategic communication in different forms such asphone conversation, correspondence, meetings," Luo said.

"Certainly they will meet again during BRICS (Brazil,Russia, India, China, South Africa) Summit in South Africa in July and probablyG20 Summit in Argentina in November."

In terms of economic cooperation, Luo said that China wasIndia's largest trading partner. Last year, the bilateral trade volume reached$84.4 billion.

"More than 800 Chinese companies are investing anddoing business in India, creating over one lakh job opportunities forIndia," he said.

He also stressed on people-to-people contacts to strengthenmutual understanding between the people of the two countries.

 "We should givefull play to the high-level people-to-people and cultural exchange mechanism toenhance exchanges in the fields of movie, sports, tourism, museum andyouth," he said.

Luo also called coordination between India and China onregional and international issues.

"China-India relations have gone beyond bilateralscope. We have broad converging interests and face common challenges in Asiaand beyond," he said.

"We need to enhance cooperation in SCO, BRICS, G20 andjoin hands to tackle global challenges to forge global economic integration,free trade and multilateralism. We should continue to push forward "ChinaIndia Plus" cooperation."

Finally, he called for control and management of differencesbetween the two sides.

"India is our immediate neighbor. It's quite natural tohave differences with neighbors. We need to narrow differences throughexpanding cooperation. However, it does not mean that differences would beignored," Luo said.

"The boundary question between our two countries was left over by history. We need to build on convergence to find a mutual acceptable solution through the Special Representatives' meeting while adopting confidence building measures to maintain the peace and tranquility along the border."