NEW DELHI: India’s prime minister said yesterday a dispute over an alleged incursion by Chinese troops deep inside Indian-claimed territory can be settled peacefully and warned against exacerbating tensions.
The reported Chinese infiltration across the disputed Himalayan border has strained ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours whose relations have long been chequered by mutual suspicion—a legacy of a 1962 border war.
“We do believe it is possible to resolve this problem. Talks are going on,” Prime Minister Manmoahn Singh said in his first comments on the incident in the Ladakh region normally controlled by India.
“It is a localised problem,” he told reporters in New Delhi.
Indian analysts say a Chinese intrusion could be a response to New Delhi’s drive to step up road-building near their de facto border to ferry Indian troops and counter China’s build-up of military infrastructure.
Singh’s statement came a day after Indian Defence Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma told parliamentarians Chinese soldiers had pitched their tents nearly 20km inside Indian-claimed territory.
The premier’s comments echoed other Indian ministers who have insisted the alleged incursion in the unpopulated desert area can be settled through diplomatic channels.
Beijing has made similar statements, with the Chinese government saying on Friday both countries had the “capacity and wisdom” to defuse the row through “friendly consultation”.
India has called on Beijing to withdraw its soldiers but China’s foreign ministry earlier in the week denied Chinese troops had “crossed the lines”.
Singh warned against stoking tensions between the Asian giants whose bilateral trade soared by a third to nearly $76bn last year.
“We do not want to accentuate the situation,” Singh said, adding New Delhi has “a plan”, without elaborating.
Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid announced earlier in the week he will 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.
An Indian foreign ministry official has said new Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will travel to New Delhi late next month.
Lower-level talks between military officials have so far failed to break the impasse over the camp that New Delhi says Chinese troops set up on April 15.
The informal border separating China and India is known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). While it has never been formally demarcated, the countries have signed two accords to maintain peace in frontier areas.
Small incursions of a few kilometres across the contested boundary are common but it is rare for either country to set up camps in disputed territory.
AFP
