NEW DELHI, Aug 26: A senior US diplomat was visiting Srinagar on Monday while another was briefing the Chinese leadership about Washington’s progress with the seemingly intractable issue of India-Pakistan tensions, officials and news reports said on Monday.

Lisa Curtis, senior adviser to US Secretary of State, Christina Rocca, was reported to have met with Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat, chairman of Kashmir’s All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) at Bhat’s residence-cum-office in Srinagar.

The visit was being seen as part of Washington’s effort to get a first hand account of what was in store in Kashmir ahead of the visit to New York next month by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf.

Star News reported that US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, was in Beijing to brief Chinese leaders on his efforts to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan.

Armitage, who arrived on Sunday from Pakistan, was also expected to discuss Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s planned Oct 25 visit to US President George W. Bush’s family home in Texas.

Meanwhile, China announced on Sunday that it has issued new regulations on missile technology exports, a key sore point in US-Chinese relations.

Washington has accused Beijing of transferring sensitive technology to Pakistan, Iran and other nations. Armitage did not comment on the regulations, but the White House praised the measures, Star News said.

In a related development on Monday, Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha was quoted as raising the issue of joint patrolling of the India-Pakistan border. He said Pakistan has to make up its mind about whether it’s open to this offer by India or not.

“You will recall that our Prime Minister had brought up the possibility of joint border patrols with Pakistan. But for this to happen, Pakistan must accept that terrorist camps operating from within their territory are beyond their control. That’s something we still find very hard to believe,” Sinha, who returned home after a visit to Nepal and Bangladesh, was quoted by Star News as saying.

Sinha, however, did not see much hope for improving relations with Pakistan in the face of “continued terrorism from across the border”. “The prospect of improvement of relations with our neighbour Pakistan, unfortunately, cannot be realized in the face of the continued support provided by it to terrorism directed at India,” Sinha said.

“Pakistan’s commitments to permanently end infiltration and cross-border terrorism have not been fulfilled and indeed the battery of false allegations accusing India of certain actions in the Gultari sector along the Line of Control in recent days, only confirms Pakistan’s unscrupulous use of false information to meet its diplomatic ends,” Sinha said.

Diplomats in New Delhi said Sinha’s remarks indicated there was virtually no chance of a meeting in New York between Gen Musharraf and Vajpayee.

On closer scrutiny it appears that India has not even clearly committed that Vajpayee would attend the Saarc summit in Islamabad in January next year, diplomats observed. They said Indian comments about the Saarc summit, including the one by Defence Minister George Fernandes, had spoken only about the meeting going ahead. Fernandes had said: “We will be there,” but did not rule out that President Abdul Kalam could be asked to represent New Delhi in Islamabad, if relations did not pick up by then.

Most analysts had hoped relations would thaw between the two neighbours after the Indian-backed polls in Kashmir are over in October. But Fernandes has said that troops could remain on the border even beyond October. What India wants realistically from Pakistan and what it is likely to get out of the Kashmir polls would be known the Americans partly after the Curtis tour of Kashmir, diplomats said.