Chinese spanner in India's Pacific designs

Melbourne, Mar 18 (UNI) A strong pro-China lobby in Canberra is reportedly working hard to thwart a quadrilateral security dialogue involving the US, Japan, Australia and India.

The possibility of four powerful economies coming together has got impetus from the signing of the Australia-Japan joint declaration on security in Tokyo on March 13.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe inked the historic agreement which would facilitate close cooperation across the security front between the two of the strongest Pacific region powers.

The international politics experts augur this declaration would pave way for the formation of the aforementioned 'axis of democracies' with much larger global dimensions.

But some Australian commentators have also ruled out chances of any such quadrilateral arrangement as the Chinese lobby down under would see it as another attempt to encircle the emerging superpower.

It has been widely reported in the regional media that the US has proposed widening the trilateral security dialogue between Japan, the US and Australia to include the South Asian democracy.

The opposition to such an alliance would be instantaneous and ferocious. It is not only the Chinese apparatchik who would most likely register displeasure, but also the strong pro-China lobby in Australia.

The opposition leader Kevin Rudd has, in a what could be long term foreign policy embarrassment for him, already opposed Australia-Japan security declaration.

Any suggestion of annoying China further, experts opine, would be simply unthinkable for the emerging Australian politics pin-up boy.

Alan Dupont, director of Sydney University's Centre for International Security Studies, has also debunked the recent Australian parleys with Japan labeling it an attempt to contain China.

"It would be extremely unwise, in my view, to be drawn into a quadrilateral arrangement which would only reinforce Chinese fears of strategic encirclement," Dr Dupont told The Australian newspaper.

"What would be the purpose of formalising such an alliance? The only reason would be to constrain China's rising power. It smacks too much like Cold War containment," the Australian academic added.

Some observers also feel Australia's effort to impede the progress of an alliance of the world's sole superpower, the second largest economy in the world (Japan), and the second most populous nation on earth may lead to the exclusion of the small Pacific country.

"There must always be a difference in the political relationship we have with a democracy as opposed to a dictatorship. An arrangement like this with India is gold for Australia. If we don't join it, it will happen without us" The Australian foreign affairs expert Greg Sheridan wrote.

UNI