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China-India: Ancient route to
peace
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI - The
world's two most populous countries, India and China,
plan to resolve long-standing disputes over their
3,500-kilometer-long border by reviving a centuries-old
trade that was halted abruptly by a brief but bloody war
in 1962.
On Monday, the two countries signed a
memorandum of understanding (MoU) to revive border trade
but steered clear of outstanding issues that might not
be resolved during Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee's six-day visit to China. He arrived there on
Sunday.
Vajpayee, the first Indian prime
minister to visit China in 10 years, spent two hours on
Monday with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao who, official
sources here said, described the visit as a "the
beginning of a new era in China-India relations".
In a televised briefing in Beijing soon after
their historic meeting at the Great Hall of the People,
Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said the two
sides had agreed that one bilateral issue - the
unresolved border - could not hold hostage other areas
where cooperation was possible.
The neighbors
signed as many as nine agreements, including those for
the easing of visa norms and strengthening bilateral
cooperation in various fields.
Wen, who assumed
office barely three months ago, announced that China had
earmarked US$500 million for investment in India.
Vajpayee returned the gesture by saying that Chinese
firms investing in India could expect the best possible
treatment.
Among those who welcomed the
development was Professor Alokesh Baruah, a well-known
economist and expert on India's neglected northeastern
region that is likely to benefit greatly by the
reopening of the ancient trade routes through the Indian
states of Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, which border
China.
"The only way that the northeastern
region can be developed is through trade and the whole
area has remained dormant for too long only because of
closed borders," Baruah said.
Reporters
accompanying the Indian team were informed by Foreign
Minister Sinha that the issue of Chinese recognition of
Sikkim - a Himalayan kingdom until its merger with India
in 1975 - as an integral part of India came up during
Monday's discussions.
Apart from the Sikkim
issue, China claims 90,000 square kilometers of land in
Arunachal Pradesh. Likewise, India holds that China
occupies 38,000 square kilometers of the Ladakh region
of the former princely state of Kashmir.
Wen was
reported as saying on Saturday that Beijing was ready
for a mutually acceptable solution to the boundary
issue, which he described as a "historical burden on our
two countries left over by the colonialists".
"The Chinese side stands for a fair, reasonable
and mutually acceptable solution to the issue, a
solution that can be found through bilateral talks in
accordance with the principles of consultation on an
equal footing, mutual understanding, mutual
accommodation and mutual adjustment," Wen was quoted as
saying.
Baruah said the idea that trade could
help achieve peace was a novel one made possible by the
economic liberalization of both countries.
Baruah said the present government has also been
vigorously pursuing a "Look East" policy that envisaged
the opening of India's insurgency-ridden northeastern
states to the economies of Southeast Asia and the Far
East.
"The attempt to use trade as a bridge has
not worked too well on the western side, where Pakistan
has until recently insisted that the issue of settling
the dispute over Kashmir must precede everything else,"
Baruah said.
China has in recent years toned
down its stand on Sikkim's accession to India, even
conceding that the state is a non-issue so far as the
border dispute was concerned although it has yet to
accept Sikkim officially as a part of India.
While details of Monday's MoU are yet to be made
known, China may want to reopen its border post in the
Himalayan town of Kalimpong in West Bengal state and the
consulate it maintained in Kolkata. Both had been
functional until the 1962 war.
After India and
China took their first slow steps toward peace during
the 1980s, China opened a consulate in the western port
city of Mumbai and India did likewise in Shanghai, but
reopening the Kolkata consulate was considered too
sensitive.
In spite of the movement forward on
the border-trade issue, some analysts say there has been
no breakthrough yet on the substantial issues that have
kept China and India divided for four decades -
including the annexation of Tibet by China.
"It
will be something of a miracle if the Vajpayee visit can
make serious headway on the boundary question,"
commented Anand Sahay in Monday's Hindustan Times, an
influential daily newspaper.
"At the root of the
boundary problem is India's 1954 one-sided acceptance of
China's annexation of Tibet without Beijing's acceptance
of the Indo-Tibetan border," said Brahma Chellaney, a
strategic-affairs expert with the prestigious Center for
Policy Research.
Chellaney said the border talks
have reached a "dead end" because China is unwilling to
take even the preliminary step of exchanging maps.
(Inter Press Service)
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