From S.N.M. Abdi
KOLKATA, August 2 – Remarks attributed to a senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official have clouded the prospects of a breakthrough in negotiations over the festering border dispute between China and India.
The third round of high-level border talks in New Delhi between Deputy Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and India’s new national security adviser, Jyoti Nath Dixit, ended last week.
But the reported comments of Shen Guofang, assistant minister in the Foreign Ministry, have sparked a controversy and cast a shadow over the negotiations. Speaking to Indian journalists visiting China, Shen said that “there is no easy solution to the border dispute.” And added: “The process of resolving the dispute is not smooth and there are specific problems. The deeper we go, the more problems there are.” Shen also pointed out that India is the only neighbour with whom China still has a border dispute.
New Delhi has not officially reacted to Shen’s loaded remarks but a high-ranking Indian Foreign Ministry official said that Shen’s comments probably reflected Beijing’s displeasure over new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s and ruling Congress party president Sonia Gandhi’s meeting with Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, earlier this month. India has hosted the Dalai Lama since he fled Tibet in 1959 amid a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said: “The Chinese government is opposed to any meetings with the Dalai Lama by officials of any country.”
“China reacted adversely immediately after Dalai Lama’s meeting with Manmohan and Sonia. But Shen’s calculated remarks show that Beijing was not satisfied. So it fired another salvo.”
Significantly, India’s Director General of Military Operations Lt. Gen. Amrik Singh Bahia briefed Dixit ahead of the two-day talks.
Dixit also attended a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security comprising the prime minister, Home Minister Shivraj Patil, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and Army Chief N. C. Vij.
“My brief was cleared at the highest political level,” Dixit said without giving details. “I knew what to ask Mr Dai and how to answer his questions.”
Last week’s meeting was the first between Dai and Dixit. The first two rounds on January 12 and 13, 2004, and October 23-24 last year were held between Dai and Brajesh Mishra, the security adviser to the previous government. India and China agreed to talks between their senior representatives when Vajpayee visited Beijing in June last year – the first visit by an Indian prime minister in a decade – in a new push to settle the border over which the two nations went to war in 1962.
The political envoys were handpicked by Premier Wen Jibao and Vajpayee after more than 15 years of meetings of a joint working group failed to break the deadlock.
The nuclear-armed neighbours have still not demarcated a border with the post-conflict Line of Actual Control identifying their respective territories.
