How China Is Blocking The Terror Debate

At the Goa summit, Modi woos Putin, irks Xi and courts BIMSTEC, exposing the divisions within BRICS.

- R. Prasannan

An accidental barge-in by Narendra Modi into a chat between Xi Jinping and Pushpa Kamal Dahal in Goa has come to symbolise the tensions within BRICS-BIMSTEC.

Prime Minister Dahal of Nepal, in Goa for the BIMSTEC outreach summit on October 16, was leaving a venue when he was told to wait a bit for the convoy of Brazil President Michel Temer, a BRICS guest, to pass.Dahal moved into an ante-room to join President Xi Jinping of China, another BRICS guest. The two got into a ‘pull-aside’ bilateral then and there. That was when host Modi, unaware of what was going on in the room , barged in. Dahal’s son Prakash clicked a few non-selfies of the three sitting there with sheepish smiles.

The gatecrash symbolised in a Freudian way the suspicions that one BRICS member has about another flirting with a BIMSTEC member, and also of the conflicts within BRICS. India has been jealously guarding Nepal, and eyeing every Chinese wink at Nepal as flirting. Hasn’t China been flirting! It is building roads and rail lines to get to the ‘heart’ of Nepal, causing heartburn in India. No wonder the gatecrash raised some mirth among the stiff lipped diplomats, who were missing the flirtatious beaches of Goa.