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India wants China as "partner" but unease remains

By Krittivas Mukherjee | Reuters

(from L-R) Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, India’s Foreign Minister Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna and China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi pose before their meeting in the southern Indian city of Bangalore on 27 October 2009.File photo/Reuters/India

India said on Wednesday it wanted to see China as a “partner” while the Asian giants stake out a global role, a day after their foreign ministers met to defuse spiralling tensions over a festering border dispute.

But the two sides appeared to sidestep several contentious issues in a bilateral meeting on Tuesday, including visa policy and Beijing’s support for projects in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, which India claims.

Both sides are trying to rein in rising rhetoric over reports of troop mobilisation along the border and more recently a planned visit by the Dalai Lama to an Indian state Beijing claims, stoking fears the rivalry could spiral out of control.

Each side claims vast swathes of the other’s territory along their 3,500-km (2,173-mile) Himalayan boundary, leading to occasional charges of border incursions.

“It (the border) is not delineated. As a result there could be incursions once in a while but nothing to be alarmed about,” Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna told reporters. “The effort is to take the relationship to the level of being partners.”

Krishna said India did not raise the issue of Chinese projects inside Pakistani Kashmir, while the Chinese defended their stand on a separate visa policy for Indians.

New Delhi sees a Chinese move to issue visas on loose sheets to Indian Kashmiris as an attempt to undermine its rule over the region that is at the core of its rivalry with Pakistan.

“We discussed the visa questions, they said they have not made any discriminations … we are insisting that there should be a uniform action in the issuances of visa for Indian passport holders,” Krishna said.

Differences also remained over the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh. Beijing sees the Dalai Lama’s trip as encouraging the Tibetan struggle by undermining Chinese territorial integrity.

Krishna reiterated India’s position on the Tibetan leader as that of a “guest” free to travel anywhere in India.

“That has been the Indian position. The only restriction we have put on the Dalai Lama is he should not indulge in politics or he should not indulge in boundary-related questions.”

India has been home to the Dalai Lama since he fled a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

The two sides, which vie for resource and influence in Africa and Asia, have an experts forum which has held 13 rounds of border negotiations. But little progress has been achieved. The two sides fought a brief war in 1962 over their border disputes.

Copyright © 2009 Reuters

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