Won't take balderdash on Arunachal, PM tells president

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday clearly told Chinese president Hu Jintao that India would not make any concessions in the east, rejecting China’s claims over Arunachal Pradesh.

“We’ll not make any concessions in the east,’’ the prime minister is said to have categorically told the Chinese president during the course of their discussions here on Tuesday, but agreed at the same time that the process of resolution of the long-standing border dispute between the two Asian powers needed to be accelerated.

The Chinese side’s willingness to stay engaged in the negotiating table was evident from the formulation on the issue in the joint declaration. “The special representatives of India and China on the boundary question have taken steps and shall continue to strive to arrive at a boundary settlement on the basis of the agreement on political parameters and guiding principles signed on April 11, ’05.

An early settlement of the boundary question will advance basic interests of the two countries and shall, therefore, be pursued as a strategic objective,” the joint declaration said.

In the run up to Mr Hu’s visit, India and China was engaged in a war of words over Arunchal Pradesh after Chinese ambassador to New Delhi, Sun Yuxi sought to re-open the issue in the run-up to Hu’s visit to India.

“In our position, the whole of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory and Tawang is only one place in it,’’ the Chinese ambassador told a news channel in response to a specific query about the status of Tawang, a strategic town located in the western part of Arunachal Pradesh, close to the Chinese border.

“We’re claiming whole of that (Arunachal Pradesh),’’ Sun added - a position that was rejected almost immediately by external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, who made it clear that Arunachal Pradesh was an integral part of India.

While rejecting Beijing’s stance on Arunachal Pradesh, the prime minister, during the course of his deliberations with the visiting Chinese president, “appreciated’’ the progress made by two special representatives (national security advisor MK Narayanan and his Chinese counterpart Dai Binggua) in their discussions on the boundary question.

The ‘special representative’ mechanism was put in place by the two countries in June, ’03, to address the vexed border dispute. As many as seven rounds of meetings have already been held since then.

The two countries have shared a knotty, long-standing border dispute. While New Delhi claims that China is illegally occupying 43,180 sq km of Jammu and Kashmir, including 5,180 sq km illegally ceded to Beijing by Islamabad, China accuses India of possessing some 90,000 sqkm of its territory, mostly in Arunachal Pradesh.

Dates for the next round of meeting between the two SRs, according to foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon, will be set up soon. “The political push is clear when both leaders are saying that they want an early settlement of the border issue,’’ he told newspersons later in the day.