No claims beyond J&K, China told

Sandeep Dikshit

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Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 12

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar today assured Beijing that the developments related to Jammu and Kashmir had no implications for either the external boundaries of India or the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. “India is not raising any additional claims and the Chinese concerns in this regard are misplaced,” Jaishankar told his Chinese counterpart Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing.

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He was trying to set the record straight after the Chinese Foreign Minister said India’s announcement of the establishment of the Ladakh Union Territory, “which involves Chinese territory”, posed a challenge to China’s sovereignty and violated the two countries’ agreement on maintaining peace and stability in the border region.

The Chinese Foreign Minister stressed on the need to abide by the UN Charter, respect sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and address disputes through dialogue. “We will continue to utilise the special representative mechanism over the boundary question to seek early harvest in boundary negotiation,” he said. “Early harvest” is understood to be an indication on settling the middle sector, which is the least contentious of the three portions of the Sino-India provisional border.

Chinese sensitivities were exacerbated after Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in Parliament on August 6 that India was committed to regaining the lost territories of J&K, including Aksai Chin. This observation elicited a statement from China in which it decried the hiving off of Ladakh as a separate Union Territory as “unacceptable” and said it “had always opposed the inclusion of its territory in India’s administrative jurisdiction in the western part of the Sino-Indian border.”

At that time, India had shot back by stating that it “does not comment on the internal affairs of other countries and similarly expects other countries to do likewise “and reminded China that they had agreed to a mutually acceptable settlement.

Jaishankar is in Beijing to attend the Sino-India high-level mechanism to promote cultural exchanges and people-to-people contacts. He  also called on Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan, considered a confidant of President Xi Jinping. During his three-day visit, he will prepare for the second informal summit between PM Narendra Modi and Xi to be held in India. 

The developments in J&K had grabbed the spotlight, especially after Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi airdashed to Beijing at the end of which the Chinese Foreign Ministry said India had “continued to damage China’s territorial sovereignty by unilaterally modifying the form of domestic law”. Jaishankar’s assurances should assuage those concerns.

Jaishankar said the changes in J&K would have “no bearing” on Pakistan as it was India’s internal matter. It also did not impact the LoC. In fact, India had shown restraint in the face of provocative Pakistan rhetoric. India has always stood for normalisation of ties in an atmosphere free of terror, he stressed.