Shiv Shankar Menon and Wen Jiabao

New Delhi, July 7: Call it a North versus South battle in the heart of India’s government. The home ministry, located in North Block at Raisina Hill, and the South Block-based external affairs ministry cannot see eye to eye on things Chinese.

The latest issue relates to the home ministry sitting for six months on three Chinese journalists’ visa applications, which were forwarded to it by the foreign ministry for security clearance.

Now the foreign office has decided to invoke a rarely used discretionary power and let the Chinese trio come and work in India without home ministry clearance — a move that may not go down well at North Block, sources said.

Foreign ministry mandarins feel the home ministry’s attitude on China — recently dubbed “paranoid” and “alarmist” by environment minister Jairam Ramesh — can hurt India’s efforts to “normalise” relations with its largest neighbour.

North Block’s dithering on the Chinese journalists’ visas had left national security adviser Shiv Shankar Menon red-faced during his otherwise successful four-day visit to China that concluded today.

Sources said China’s state-owned television had requested the visas for three of its journalists six months ago. The Chinese side raised the delay with Menon, a former foreign secretary.

A flurry of phone calls and the sifting of several files revealed that home ministry babus had not processed the files. In May, the home ministry’s refusal to provide security clearance to Chinese telecom equipment had prompted Ramesh’s attack on North Block during a Beijing trip.

Indian officials in Beijing have promised the Chinese that the visa problems would be sorted out soon.

Menon yesterday met Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who told him during the 40-minute talks: “It will be Asia’s century if India and China have a strong relationship.”

The national security adviser discussed a gamut of subjects with top Chinese officials, including the possibility of working together to tap Afghanistan’s huge mineral deposits.

The overarching objective of Menon’s visit was to find ways to broad-base the China-India relationship so that it did not remain hostage to any single, thorny issue.

Menon’s trip comes days before Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s six-day state visit to China. Menon broached the issue of China-Pakistan nuclear co-operation, but only briefly.

“It (the Sino-Pak nuclear deal) took less than two-and-a-half sentences in the whole visit. This is not the whole point of the visit, even though some stories tried to make it (appear so). We have a relationship which is not externally driven,” Menon told Indian reporters in Beijing.

Sources said the Indian side was satisfied with China’s assurance that it would adopt all safeguards while setting up two nuclear reactors in Pakistan.