India is protesting a new Chinese map that lays claim to India’s territory ahead of next week’s G20 summit in New Delhi, an Indian foreign ministry official said, exacerbating tensions during a three-year military standoff between the two nations.
The timing of the protest is key, as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is expected to attend the summit of industrialized and developing countries.
“We reject these claims as they have no basis. Such steps by the Chinese side only complicate the resolution of the boundary question,” Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Arindam Bagchi said in a statement on Tuesday.
Photo: AFP
He said India on Tuesday formally lodged the objection through diplomatic channels with the Chinese side on the so-called “standard map” of China that lays claim to India’s territory.
The version of the Chinese map published on the Web site of the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources clearly shows Arunachal Pradesh and the Doklam Plateau, over which the two sides have feuded, included within Chinese borders, along with Aksai Chin in the western section which China controls, but India still claims.
Indian Minister of External Affairs Subhramanyam Jaishankar also dismissed China’s claim in a television interview on Tuesday.
“Making absurd claims on India’s territory does not make it China’s territory,” Jaishankar said.
China recently refused to put visas in the passports of officials from Arunachal Pradesh state in India’s northeast, using a stapled-in certificate instead. It also refuses to recognize India’s sovereignty over its part of Kashmir and declined to send a delegation to a G20 meeting in Srinagar in May.
Last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi informally spoke to Xi on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, where Modi highlighted New Delhi’s concerns about their unresolved border issues.
India’s foreign ministry said the two leaders agreed to intensify efforts to de-escalate tensions at the disputed border between them and bring home thousands of their troops deployed there.
The disputed boundary has led to a three-year standoff between tens of thousands of Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Ladakh area. A clash three years ago in the region killed 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese.
“The two sides should bear in mind the overall interests of their bilateral relations and handle properly the border issue so as to jointly safeguard peace and tranquility in the border region,” the Chinese foreign ministry said after the two leaders’ meeting.
Indian and Chinese military commanders had met earlier this month in an apparent effort to stabilize the situation. A border, dubbed the “Line of Actual Control,” separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety.
India and China had fought a war over their border in 1962. China claims about 90,000 square kilometers of territory in India’s northeast, including Arunachal Pradesh with its mainly Buddhist population.
India says China occupies 38,000 square kilometers of its territory in the Aksai Chin, which India considers part of Ladakh, where the current face-off is happening.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home