Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday he believes a border dispute over an alleged incursion by Chinese soldiers can be resolved, the Press Trust of India reported.
“It is a localized problem, we do believe it can be solved,” Singh was quoted as saying by the news agency after Chinese soldiers were accused of intruding across the disputed border in the Ladakh region earlier this month.
The incident has marked a renewal of tensions between the Asian neighbors, whose relations are often prickly — a legacy of a 1962 border war.
Photo: EPA
Singh’s statement came after Indian Defense Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma presented a report on the incursion to a parliamentary watchdog on Friday in which local media said he alleged Chinese soldiers had advanced nearly 20km into Indian-claimed territory.
The prime minister’s comments, his first on the dispute, echoed statements of other government ministers playing down the alleged incursion in the western part of Indian-held Kashmir’s Ladakh region and insisting it can be settled amicably.
“We have a plan, we do not want to accentuate the situation,” Singh said, without elaborating.
Lower-level talks between military officials have so far failed to break the impasse.
According to officials in New Delhi, a platoon of Chinese troops set up a camp inside Indian territory on April 15.
Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid announced earlier in the week that he would head for China on May 8, saying both countries had a mutual interest in not allowing the dispute to “destroy” long-term progress in ties.
A foreign ministry official has said new Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) is due to travel to New Delhi late next month, without giving an exact date.
India has called on the Chinese soldiers to withdraw, while China has denied any wrongdoing.
In 1962, China gave India a bloody nose in the war fought in the Himalayan regions of Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.
The de facto border separating China and India is known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). While it has never been formally demarcated, the countries signed two accords to maintain peace in frontier areas in 1993 and 1996.
Small incursions are not uncommon across the LAC, but it is rare for either country to set up camps in disputed territory.
In recent years, the two neighbors have increased their military presence on each side of the border and hold frequent meetings to defuse tensions. Despite the border tensions, trade between the Asian giants has soared in recent years.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS