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.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS