SINGAPORE: India has said it will not rush to resolve differences with China over their contested border issue and will instead move step by step, though there has been steady progress in the overall bilateral ties.
“Every step we have taken with China over the years is a positive step. I think we have constantly, if not rapidly, made progress. I feel there is no reason why we should continue to feel a sense of alarm or discomfort.
“But it helps to remain cautious and vigilant and careful. Because it is not a relationship that has finally overcome the difficult issues that caused us to actually come into a confrontation,” The Straits Times today quoted External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid as saying in an interview.
Khurshid, who is here on a bilateral visit, said while both sides are determined to resolve the issue, “we are also very clear that it does not help to hasten resolution if you are not ready for resolution, you must take it a step at a time.”
India asserts that border dispute covered about 4,000 km, while China claims that it confined to about 2,000 km to the area of Arunachal Pradesh, which it refers as Southern Tibet.
The two sides last week held the 16th round of border talks and decided to seek a fair and rational solution to the issue as they focused on the proposed Border Defense Cooperation Agreement to avert incursions like the one witnessed in Leh region last month.
The talks were held against the backdrop of the recent incursion of Chinese troops in Depsang Valley in Ladakh.
His comments came as Defense Minister A K Antony is undertaking a four-day visit to China for high-level talks with Chinese leadership on new confidence building measures to maintain peace at the disputed borders.
Khurshid said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had a very good relationship with the previous leadership in China.
“The new leadership has signaled very positively both in South Africa, where the president of China met our prime minister and when Prime Minister Li (Keqiang) came to India,” he said, adding that his own meeting with Li in Beijing was extremely warm and friendly.
“I think he made a good impression during his visit to Delhi. He truly represents the new generation of leadership in China. He is an open, he is outgoing, he is comforting person.
I think he is familiar with the way the diplomatic exercises are done in our times. I think he would build a very good relationship with our leadership,” he added.
Khurshid suggested India’s Look East policy should be extended beyond ASEAN and East-Asian powers of China, Japan and South Korea. Asked whether India backed off and agreed to dismantle a whole lot of things to resolve the Depsang row, Khurshid said, “We are not using this language of backing off and scoring points, and victors and losers. That is not the relationship we have with China, that is not the kind of relationship we want to encourage people to believe we have with China.”
“We have not gone into details of what happened. I did, when I met with the Prime Minister Li Keqiang and the foreign minister Wang Yi, indicate that it is important that we do some analysis on both sides to learn from that experience.
Unless we know why it happened, we will not be in a proper frame of mind or proper position to prevent it from happening again,” he said.
Khurshid said the two countries just had the 16th round of Special Representatives’ talks and both sides have said the talks were good, meaningful and that peace and tranquility on the border remains the high priority for these discussions.
“I think the body language and the articulation of our concern about each other between China and ourselves, which has been noticed by the people at the Brunei meeting, augurs well,” he added.
In Brunei, Khurshid met his Chinese counterpart Wang on the sidelines of the ASEAN-ARF meeting.
“We know that there are some difficult issues that need to be resolved but we also know we have in place some mechanisms that address those issues from going out of hand.
The need is to strengthen those mechanisms.
“We already have a draft given to us by China for co-operation on the border. We are looking at the draft and will get back to them,” he added.
Khurshid said the (Depsang) episode did not cause loss of face to the government but to those who were prophesying doomsday. –PTI
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