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Li Peng coming to India |
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Mr. Li Peng, former Premier of China and presently Chairman of Standing Committee of the National people’s Congress, will be arriving in India on January 10. Being the number two in China’s political hierarchy, he will be the highest Chinese leader to arrive in India since the Pokhran tests. Mr. Peng had come to India to reciprocate former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s ice-breaking Beijing visit of 1988. The five years that followed the thaw of Sino-Indian relations marked by the visits to Beijing by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and one by Chinese President Jiang Zemin. After stepping down as Premier in 1998, Mr. Peng has maintained a high profile role in international affairs.
Foreign Office sources said that Mr. Peng’s visit was not anticipated as India was given to understand that Prime Minister Zhou Rongji would be coming on an official visit in early 2001. Either way, the presence of the second most important Chinese leader in India would signal Beijing’s gesture of its keenness to end the era of mutual district that began with the Pokhran test and subsequent statement by Defence Minister George Fernandes that China was India’s biggest threat. Though India and China have pledged to look beyond differences on the border question, it still prevail as the main plank for dialogue. During Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan’s visit to India, it was agreed that the two sides would discuss on the Line of Actual Control that subsequently led to the two sides exchanging maps on the region.
Exchange of border maps : Need for concessions to resolve dispute
It is for the first time ever that India and China have exchanged maps in the central sector in order to come to grips with each other’s point of view pertaining to the layout of the Line of Actual Control along the border between the WTO countries in this sector. Both sides also expressed hope that similar exchanges should take place in relation to the Western and the Eastern sectors. While this is definitely an encouraging step - that too a primordial cum tangible one - in resolving the contentious border dispute, India needs to take a hard and realistic look at the crux of the entire matter. Each of the three sectors press a strategic content which has a bearing on the aspect of security. The Aksai Chin highway connects western Tibet with southern Xinjiang in the eastern sector, making the Central Asia Republic (CAR) that much more accessible; the Kalapani issue is intrinsic to Indo-Nepal relations, besides China, in the central sector; and the sensitive China-India-Mynamar trijunction in northeast Arunachal Pradesh loom large in the eastern sector. Thus each sector provides adequate s cope for gerrymandering. However, as far as China is concerned, the most important out of the three security related enumeratives is the vital Aksai Chin highway.
This highway, which helps China reduce substantial traffic circumvention, has been the principal thorn in Sino-Indian relations dating back to the late fifties through 1962-63, when this connector was actualized. The quantum of the area under Chinese occupation is some 34,000 square kilometres. This is also the most hyper topic for India’s politicians and apparently a Lok Sabha resolution exists to the effect that all the territory under China’s control will be regained although no timetable has been set for this “reconquest”. Both India and Nepal claim Kalapani which is located in the vicinity of India-Nepal-Tibet meeting point and incidentally falls on the pilgrim route from India to Mansarovar lake and mount Kailas in Tibet. China has a division sized military garrison opposite Kalapani at Tklakot to maintain a watching brief over Kalapani as well as Barahoti close by the latter being the hub of the border dispute between India and China in this sector. Hence Barahoti and Kalapani are interlinked in as much as unless the former is resolved first the latter cannot be settled. The eastern sector has the longest span of the dispute, Viz, from the Sikkim-North Bengal-Bhutan salient thrusting into India to the full length of Arunachal Pradesh up to the Myanmar trijunction, barring Bhutan in the middle. The Sumdurong Chu ridge in west Arunachal Pradesh whose shoulders virtually reach up to the strategic Mishmi Hills in the far east part of the state, pose the maximum headache for India because of the innumerable approaches into Indian territory that a series of mountain crests offer to Chinese troops. This apart, the trijunction area jut across the State’s boundary to the east is of great importance to New Delhi since the political proximity between Beijing and Yangon is very close and cordial. The question is, what should India do to reconcile this immense border nettle with China? The doctrine of statecraft o dexterously formulated by Kautilya and seconded by Sun Tzu of China, stipulates that boundaries are never sanctified in inter-state relations: what is of the essence is the sanctity of the interests of the concerned States.
We have to exercise consummate realpolitik in dealing with China. We should offer to cede Aksai Chin to them and as a quid pro quo, they should completely disengage from the central and the eastern sectors. This will mean our having to redraw the Sino-Indian border in the western sector, perhaps along the general line sough of the Karakoram Pass to the Chip Chap river, thence on to the Chushul-Spanggur area and finally to Demchok. Indian Parliament has to be persuaded to bolster our case with the clincher that the area that we are ceding to China is nothing but an ice desert, akin to Siachin and Bilafond and has no strategic or productive value for us. At the same time, it can be turned into a huge utility value if we pursue our earlier decision to explore oil and natural gas in the CAR. India can conveniently set up a pipeline through this area to say, Leh. Our previous efforts to arrange such a conduit through Pakistan came to nought.
In fact, soon after Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s pathbreaking address to the 15th Congress a few years ago, the highly respected Director of the Chinese Institute of Strategic Studies, Gen. Xu Xin, had discoursed that much in the same vein of “give and take” by which China had resolved its land border problem with contiguous Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrghystan and Tajikistan (known as the famous “Four Plus one Talks”), China was quite willing to negotiate with India.
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