Sonia all set for China visit

NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi is going on a five-day tour to China on October 25. This is her third overseas visit within a month, the other two being to South Africa and the US.

Chinese president Hu Jintao, during his visit to India last year, had met Sonia and invited her to China.
Sonia’s first visit to China was in 1988 when she accompanied her husband the late Rajiv Gandhi to sign the historic peace and tranquility agreement. She next visited China in 1996. The invitation to visit China has been pending with Sonia for a long time and was renewed by the Chinese president.

The Gandhis are held in high esteem by Beijing and the Chinese leadership was among the first to congratulate Rahul when he was appointed general secretary of the AICC.

Sonia will be accompanied by minister of state for external affairs Anand Sharma and a senior Congress functionary. It is still not clear if Rahul will accompany her. Apart from meeting the Chinese president, Sonia will meet senior members of the government and the Chinese Communist Party.

Evidently, the Chinese government is attaching a lot of importance to the visit. “We believe Sonia Gandhi’s China visit will boost mutual understanding and friendship between leaders of the two parties and we highly appreciate the positive role played by the Indian Congress party to promote friendship and cooperative relations between the two countries,” said Zhang Zhijun, deputy head of the international department of the central committee of the Communist Party of China.