India's relationship with China, long bedeviled by mutual suspicion and border disputes, has been transformed by a determination to cooperate and deal with problems, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said yesterday.
"I must say, with great satisfaction, that my meetings with the leadership of China have been excellent," he said as the two countries prepared to issue a declaration expected to give a push to resolving territorial disputes.
"They have confirmed the desire to build stable, enduring and forward-looking ties of friendships shared by the highest political levels in both countries," he said after talks with ex-president Jiang Zemin (
PHOTO: AP
"Our present course of developing all-round bilateral cooperation while simultaneously addressing our differences has transformed the quality of our relationship," Vajpayee said.
The two countries signed the declaration on Monday. They refused to make it public immediately, but officials from both sides said they expected it to help them work to resolve disputes over their border, which crosses some of the world's most mountainous and remote terrain.
Nuclear-armed China and India fought a brief border war in 1962 and despite a thaw in relations, and years of talks, have failed to pin down exactly where their 3,500km border lies.
Vajpayee, making the first trip to China by an Indian prime minister in a decade, declared the era of mutual suspicion dead on Monday.
During his busy six-day visit, he is also due to meet President Hu Jintao (
The two neighbors, whose combined populations comprise a third of humanity, signed a series of agreements on Monday laying out their vision of a new, closer relationship.
The official newspaper the China Daily said ties with India had entered a new phase after New Delhi explicitly recognized Tibet as part of China in the declaration.
China has long resented India's decision to give shelter to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, following a 1959 revolt against Chinese rule.
The Dalai Lama and a self-proclaimed government-in-exile are based in the north Indian town of Dharamsala. New Delhi's position in the past has been that Tibet is an autonomous region of China.
The two sides also signed an agreement on expanding cross-border trade which could include a route through Sikkim, which China has long refused to recognize as part of India.
India annexed the tiny state bordering Tibet in 1975 after its legislature voted to abolish the monarchy.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS