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China, Pak wind up talks on 'recent developments'

Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad ended discussions on India's nuclear tests with crucial ally China today, with both sides keeping quiet about the results.

Ahmad left Beijing this morning for home, embassy spokesman Rafique Dhar said.

He said Ahmad discussed "recent developments'' in the region yesterday with Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and other officials, but refused to provide details. He added that the foreign secretary might issue a statement on the talks when he arrived in Islamabad.

Tang's spokesman Zhu Bangzao told reporters that Chinese and Pakistani officials "held an extensive exchange of views on international questions and relevant regional security questions.''

Both Zhu and Dhar refused to say if Pakistan had requested assurances from China, a declared nuclear power, that it would support Islamabad in the event of an Indian attack.

When asked by reporters if China intended to dissuade Pakistan from conducting its own nuclear test, Zhu accused India of undermining international efforts to ban nuclear testing.

"The overriding issue for the international community is to concentrate on adopting a decisive and clear-cut position against India to prompt it to give up its nuclear programme,'' Zhu said at a routine media briefing.

"Only in this way can the security environment of Pakistan and other South Asian nations be improved,'' he added.

India's five nuclear tests last week and its declaration that it was capable of building a bomb have unnerved China, which has made regional peace a priority for its economic development.

Zhu's criticisms were echoed in China's tightly controlled state media.The People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the ruling Communist party, pilloried India for trying to depict China as a military threat and thereby justify the nuclear tests.

"Nobody believes this type of lying logic,'' the newspaper said in a commentary published in many major national dailies.

The army's newspaper accused India of seeking to dominate South Asia at the expense of regional stability.

"Its beautiful dreams of regional hegemony are, as far as the world is concerned, a nightmare,'' the Liberation Army daily said in a commentary.

UNI

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