Ashok Tuteja
Tribune News ServiceNew Delhi, October 14
The simmering tension between India and China aggravated today with New Delhi strongly objecting to China’s decision to continue to undertake projects with Islamabad in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and asking Beijing to cease such activities.
A day after India angrily rejected Beijing’s objection to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh for electioneering, New Delhi upped the ante against China in the backdrop of a meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Reza Gilani in the Chinese capital yesterday.
“We have seen a Xinhua (Chinese official news agency) report quoting the President of China as stating that China will continue to engage in projects in PoK with Pakistan. Pakistan has been in illegal occupation of parts of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir since 1947,’’ External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.
Emphasising that Beijing was fully aware of India’s position and its concerns about Chinese activities in PoK, he hoped that the Chinese side would take a long term view of the India-China relations, and cease such activities in ‘areas illegally occupied by Pakistan’.
New Delhi has been monitoring the ongoing four-day visit of Gilani to China, primarily to attend the Prime Ministers’ meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) member states. However, it is his meetings with Chinese leaders on the margins of the SCO engagements that have been the focus of attention.
Yesterday, he met President Hu during which the Chinese leader reportedly told him that Beijing was happy to witness the smooth progress of major projects under the joint efforts of the two countries, such as the Neelam-Jhelum hydro-electric project and the Karakorum Highway upgrading project.
As if to cock a snook at India, Hu said howsoever the international situation might change, the people of China and Pakistan were ‘always joined in hearts and hands’.
Officials here acknowledged that the developments over the past few weeks have definitely given a setback to Sino-Indian political and diplomatic ties, though the trade and commercial links remain unaffected. Recent incursions by Chinese troops into the Indian territory, China blocking aid for a developmental project for Arunachal Pradesh at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and its attempt to stonewall a clean waiver for India at the nuclear suppliers’ group (NSG) meeting in September last year have given clear indications that all is not well on the Sino-Indian front.
Yesterday, China had expressed dissatisfaction over Manmohan Singh’s October 3 visit to Arunachal Pradesh, a major part of which, Beijing claims, belongs to it. New Delhi hit back shortly thereafter, asserting that Arunachal Pradesh was in integral and inalienable part of India.
