India reacts to Chinese objections

Sharply reacting to Chinese objections to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh, Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu said that “Spontaneous protests from all sections of countrymen showed how dear the state was to their hearts.”  He said that Singh’s statement, “Arunachal Pradesh — where the rays of the sun first kiss Indian soil will rise like a new star from the east and emerge as one of the best states in India,” was a reflection of the “sentiments of Arunachalees” that Arunachal Pradesh was an integral part of India.

“The reported reaction of the Chinese foreign ministry should be dismissed either as a naive statement or an attempt to throw a spanner in the ongoing peaceful process of settling the boundary dispute between the two countries,” the chief minister said in a statement. He said the patriotism of Arunachalees had been proven time and again.

There has been progress in the talks for resolving the Sino-Indian border dispute, particularly in the Arunachal sector, newly appointed Arunachal Pradesh Governor General (retd) JJ Singh has said.

“We have a broad framework for a peaceful dialogue with the Chinese government following an agreement signed at the highest level between heads of the two governments during the recent Beijing trip of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and earlier in 2003,” Singh said.

This, the Governor said, would help maintain peace and tranquility along the international border while a high level dialogue was on to resolve the dispute.

The former Army Chief, who took over as the Governor on January 27, just three days before the visit of the Prime Minister to the eastern most border state, said a high-level meeting was held at Itanagar with National Security Advisor MK Narayanan, who came along with the Prime Minister to discuss issues including the border and the insurgency problem.

On steps to deal with insurgency in Arunachal, he said, he was vested with special power under Article 371 to take necessary steps. “I want to bring in coordination and synergy of everyone responsible for law and order. Once this is in place, we will see to achieve the goal and if needed create a unified command under the leadership of Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu like in Assam and J&K.” –

Indicating that China does not have a solid legal claim on Tawang as it withdrew from there after capturing it in 1962, a former Foreign Secretary has said its withdrawal from the area in Arunachal Pradesh was a de facto acceptance of the McMahon Line.

“In 1962 China had captured Tawang and yet it withdrew from it and the rest of Arunachal Pradesh largely to what is the McMahon Line, thereby de facto accepting its validity. In the western sector, it did not go back to the pre-1962 line and retained the fruits of its aggression,” former top diplomat Kanwal Sibal has said.

In an article in the forthcoming issue of Indian Defence Review, he said if Beijing needed to hold on to Tawang for religious or security reasons or felt that their legal claim was rock solid, “they would not have withdrawn”.

Describing Beijing’s latest demand on the area now as “sheer political effrontery”, Sibal said its Tawang claim “shows absence of any real desire for a border settlement and the tactic is to contrive an issue so as to transfer the responsibility for an impasse on to the Indian side”.

Taking a tough line, Sibal said China had rejected the approach of first delineating the Line of Actual Control (LAC) “as an attempt to maintain the status quo”.

It was now trying to make the “subsequent approach unworkable by demanding significant territorial adjustments in the east, laying claim on Tawang, notwithstanding the provision in the guidelines on not disturbing settled populations.”

Maintaining that two draft Framework Agreement were under discussion of the Joint Working Group, he said once a joint document was finalised on the border issue, the next step of demarcation could begin.

Describing the Chinese as “tough, unyielding negotiators”, Sibal said negotiations with them would be a long haul. “With Russia and its Central Asian neighbours, as well as with Burma, China has reached border settlements without any significant territorial give and take, despite initial Chinese demands. The lesson for us is that we have to be resilient and firm,” he said.

Maintaining that Chinese military occupation of Tibet had “dangerous strategic consequences” for India as a buffer was removed, he said this “should have rung alarm bells” then, but New Delhi “harboured the illusion that it could unilaterally demarcate the boundary on the maps on the basis of historical data and earlier cartographic lines. This strategy ... failed disastrously.”

Though India “rightly” granted asylum to Dalai Lama, it “erred in laying a condition that he would not engage in any political activity on Indian soil.

“We gave up thus the Tibetan card voluntarily and despite the 1962 conflict ...

“We have not retaliated by using Dalai Lama’s presence in India and his affinity with us to pointedly pressure China in Tibet,” Sibal said, adding the massive infrastructure development in Tibet was intended “not for border trade but for border domination” by Beijing.

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