Would love to live in China but not when foreign minister: Salman Khurshid

NEW DELHI: External Affairs minister Salman Khurshid said he had a “very very friendly, open and productive meeting” with Chinese premier Li Keqiang, who is scheduled to visit India later this month in his first official overseas trip. During the visit, the two countries will make a joint statement that is meant to send a “strong message to our people, to Asia and the rest of the world”, Khurshid said.

Briefing the media shortly after his return from Beijing, Khurshid emphatically denied BJP president Rajnath Singh’s allegation earlier in the day that India had agreed to dismantle border infrastructure. The foreign minister said he felt a sense of relief on the Chinese side that the border issue had been resolved and a desire to move on.

“Both sides felt a measure of satisfaction that the existing mechanisms had worked” in resolving the border intrusion at Daulat Beg Oldie that lasted nearly three weeks. Khurshid told the Chinese that both sides should work out through their respective systems why such a thing happened and that in future should such incidents happen, they should “be addressed with a greater sense of urgency and with less passage of time”.

Khurshid said he found no reason during his two-day visit to modify India’s diagnosis that the border intrusion was a “localised affair”. Khurshid, who waxed eloquent about the flowers in Tiananmen Square, the warmth of the people on the streets of Beijing and Chinese blossoms in spring, said if asked whether he would like to live in China, the answer would be yes. “But not while I’m foreign minister,” he clarified.