'US should rope in China for Indo-Pak peace'

As the Obama administration pulled out all stops to welcome Chinese President Hu Jintao, literally rolling out the red carpet and United States Vice President Joe Biden for the first time going on to the tarmac to receive a foreign leader, a top foreign policy analyst hoped that the American president will push China to facilitate a rapprochement between India and Pakistan.

After the launch of his latest book -- Deadly embrace: Pakistan, America, and the future of global jihad -- Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency official and foreign policy adviser to Obama, while appreciating that the summit between Obama and Hu would be focused on US-China bilateral agenda, argued that this foreign policy dimension to the talks was critical if Washington was to prevent the South Asia region from exploding.

Riedel told rediff.com, "Since I believe there is no issue more important for American foreign policy than helping Pakistan, bringing it up with China, which is Pakistan's chief arms supplier and its most reliable ally over the last 50 years, is a necessity. I hope the president will do that."

Acknowledging that China too has a stake in Kashmir, Riedel, currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, said, "China can be a force in encouraging India and Pakistan to try to open up trade links, transit links, normalise their relationship, and then deal with the fundamental issues that have divided them for so many years."

"Let's start with the little and move to the big. China, with the world's fastest-growing economy, certainly has to be a part of that process," he added.