Kashmir issue leftover from history:China

Describing the Kashmir issue as “left over from history,” China Tuesday hoped it could be resolved by India and Pakistan through “dialogue and consultations.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu stated this during a media briefing while responding to questions on Premier Wen Jiabao’s recent visit to India and Pakistan.
Wen’s visit to India and Pakistan was “rich in content and fruitful in results” and would contribute to good neighbourliness, friendliness, mutual beneficial cooperation and peace and stability in neighbouring areas, Jiang said, summing up the Premier’s trip to the two countries. She said India and Pakistan are both major countries in South Asia and key neighbours to China.
The development of China-India and China-Pakistan ties is of “great importance to peace and prosperity to South Asia, rest of Asia and world as a whole,” she said. Asked whether the Kashmir issue figured in Wen’s talks in both the countries, she said “as we have repeatedly said here, it is an issue left over from history between India and Pakistan. As a neighbouring country and a friend to both India and Pakistan, China hopes that the two countries could properly settle this issue through dialogue and consultations.” Earlier in his briefing to the Chinese official media on Wen’s visit, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, who accompanied the Premier to the two countries, said the visit has “enhanced the two-way strategic partnerships with India and Pakistan, which presented China as a responsible country committed to good neighbourliness, unity and cooperation with its neighbours.” Meanwhile, the latest border controversy erupted between India and China when Xinhua, the news service operated by the Chinese government, described the Indo-Chinese border to be just 1,200 miles long, instead of 2,200 miles, a distance claimed by India. The border dispute has left India fuming over the omission of nearly 1,000 miles of border with its immediate neighbour. China does not recognize the border separating Jammu and Kashmir in India from Xinjiang and Tibet in China. China has always maintained Jammu and Kashmir is a separate entity and not part of India.
Jiabao, while in India, indicated the complexity of the matter when he had said that the border dispute was a “historical legacy” between the two countries that was not “easy to resolve.” Former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha reacted quite strongly to this omission. He went so far as to suggest that India should behave tit-for-tat while dealing with such matters.
Sinha suggested that just like China does not recognize India’s sovereignty over J&K, India should also treat China similarly.
Referring to the disputed status of Tibet in China, Sinha said, “this kind of cartographic aggression, there is no reason why we should also not do it.” He said “there are areas which China claims as its own and which we have always shown as part of the Chinese territory. There is no reason why we should not show it as somebody else’s.” (with inputs from GKMD)

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