Although time is running out, Beijing so far has not responded to New Delhi's efforts to discuss dates for the meeting. In fact, it appears to be stalling deliberately in a calculated diplomatic snub to India for its anti-China rhetoric on the nuclear issue.

The border talks are an annual feature under the auspices of the Joint Working Group set up after Rajiv Gandhi's visit to Beijing in 1986. The previous round was in Delhi on August 4-5 last year.

This year, Beijing is to host the JWG meet. Going by previous trends, it should have been held by now, or at least the preparatory discussions leading up to the meeting of the Foreign Secretaries should have been over.China, however, seems to have decided not to play ball for the moment, leaving New Delhi dangling and anxious about the future of the JWG.

Beijing'spique was clear even when the Expert Group of Diplomatic and Military Officials had a two-day meeting in the Chinese capital in June, soon after the Pokharan tests. The Chinese side is understood to have point blank refused to stick to the agenda and both days went in sharp exchanges over India's nuclear tests. In other words, the meeting was a disaster from the word go. Now with Beijing stonewalling the JWG meet, Sino-Indo relations are clearly in for a bad spell despite Prime Minister AB Vajpayee's repeated pleas for normal ties. Chinese diplomats in New Delhi maintain that the PM's statements do not mean anything when senior ministers in his Government continue with their anti-China rhetoric. A diplomat complained that in a recent article in a US journal on foreign affairs, even Jaswant Singh pinpointed China as a security threat for India. ``And we know how close he is to the Prime Minister,'' he stressed.

The assessment of diplomatic observers here is that China will cool off bilateral ties with Indiafor the time being while it waits for a clearer formulation of New Delhi's nuclear policy in the aftermath of the tests.Its concern is mainly whether or not India decides to weaponise and deploy and where it deploys. Obviously if there is deployment anywhere near the Sino-Indo border, Beijing will have to rework its own military and missile configurations.

According to the observers, China is so hassled by the Pokharan tests because India has upset its geo-strategic calculations in Asia, worked out over three decades of careful planning after militarily defeating New Delhi in 1962. Although Pakistan's tests have partially succeeded in quelling India's attempts to get out of the South Asia paradigm, old power equations will have to be replaced with new ones. Till the confusion clears, China will want to freeze bilateral ties at the present level, the observers feel.