China and India signed an agreement on border defense cooperation yesterday, after a standoff along a disputed border in April stoked fears of conflict between the Asian giants.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, visiting Beijing to seek a breakthrough in the border row that has soured relations for decades, witnessed the signing of the agreement alongside Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強).
The agreement will “help to maintain peace, tranquility and stability in our border areas,” Li said following the ceremony.
No further details on the pact were immediately available, but it was expected to include provisions for better communications between the two armies.
China and India fought a brief war in 1962 and the border between them has never been properly demarcated, although they have signed accords to maintain peace.
Nonetheless in April India accused Chinese troops of intruding nearly 20km into Indian-held territory, sparking a standoff that was only resolved three weeks later, when troops from both sides eventually pulled back.
Li said the two would hold joint counterterrorism training in southwest China and “strengthen cooperation to combat terrorism.”
China blames “terrorist” groups for incidents in the far western region of Xinjiang, home to Muslim Uighurs, and has in the past linked clashes to groups trained in neighboring Pakistan.
Delhi and Beijing signed nine deals yesterday, including separate memorandums of understanding to strengthen cooperation on transborder rivers and transport.
China is India’s biggest trading partner, with two-way commerce totaling US$67.83 billion in the last fiscal year, up from US$2.1 billion in 2001 to 2002.
India’s trade deficit with its neighbor soared to US$40.77 billion last year from just US$1.08 billion in 2001 to 2002, Indian figures show.
Singh was also expected to seek progress on closing the trade gap, including through increased Chinese investment in India.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS