Dharamsala, August 6 – India and China are at loggerheads in their border talks over Beijing’s claim on Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh as its territory. The negotiations between the two “emerging powers” are stuck on this since 2007 with not much hope for the dissolution of the differences when India’s national security adviser M K Narayanan meets Chinese vice-foreign minister Dai Bingguo Friday for the next round of talks in New Delhi.
China claims the northeastern Indian state as its territory and blames the Macmohan line created by Britain for overlooking the region that China says its traditionally held by it.
The sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, was born in Tawang, that forms the basis for Chinese claim on the region mostly inhabited by Buddhists.
While arriving at a final settlement of the border dispute, says India, there must be no exchange of territory in populated areas. Prime minister Manmohan Singh has publicly pointed out that only uninhabited areas can be exchanged.
Tawang has around 20,000 people, all Indian citizens.
An agreement on political parameters and guiding principles for settlement of the boundary dispute was signed when Chinese primeire Wen Jiabao was in Delhi in April 2005.
“The two sides will now have to bridge the gap on the understanding of the political parameters before there can be a forward movement,” a senior Indian official was quoted today by Daily News Analysis.
Alka Acharya, a China specialist at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, says, “The border negotiations have now come to the nitty-gritty of territorial exchanges. It is common practice for countries engaged in such complex talks to reiterate their positions…it helps to take a maximilist public position and drum up claims outside the closed doors. These are acknowledged tactics. India can do the same and lay claim to the whole of Aksai Chin.”
China earlier this year stunned India by objecting Indian President Pratibha Patil’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh, and blocking India’s development plan at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) containing a $60 million project for Arunachal Pradesh. Last year, China opposed to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the state.
India says China is illegally occupying 43,180 sq kms of Jammu and Kashmir including 5,180 sq km illegally ceded to Beijing by Islamabad under the Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement in 1963. On the other hand, China accuses India of possessing some 90,000 sq km of Chinese territory, mostly in Arunachal Pradesh.
