Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Dateline

Niraj Aryal

Persuading easily the Nepalese political actors in camps from both Left and Right to keep mum over the issues of continuous encroachment of the Nepali territory all along the porous border, the same Indian establishment of late is seen in difficulty over the issue of a Chinese authority claiming over the entire Arunachal Pradesh region that India considers an integral part of their territory.

Last November ahead of President Hu Jintao's visit to India, Sun Yuxi's, the Chinese envoy stationed in New Delhi reiterated China’s claim over Arunachal Pradesh. To which the Indian authorities apart from exhibiting their disappointment and concern over his statement within themselves are yet to rebuff to this Chinese hostility, news write-ups emerging from Delhi give such impression.

India says China is illegally occupying 43,180 sq km of Jammu and Kashmir, a part of Aksai Chin whereas Beijing accuses New Delhi of possessing some 90,000 sq km of what it claims to be Chinese territory, mostly in Arunachal Pradesh.

Recent international write-ups linking the recent ULFA outrage in the Northeast-India to that of the Chinese frequent claim over Arunachal Pradesh, adds more spice to the decade old stalemate over the Indo-China border issues.

Willard Payne an open-editorial contributor for the News Blaze writes, “It is no coincidence that right after Beijing stated through their Ambassador to Delhi that Arunachal Pradesh, in northeast India, is a Chinese territory that violence increased in Assam province just south of the area Beijing claimed.” The writer further claims that, in the list of countries supporting the ULFA fight for freedom, China should also be included.

This equation perhaps justifies some western arguments that it was China, not India that supplied arms and ammunitions to the Maoists in Nepal giving reference to the captured weapons during the insurgency in the Maoist cantonments that confirmed their origin as China.

Further linking the Nepal Maoist demands, that they will review all pacts with India, including the obsolete and unequal 1950 Treaty of Friendship some Indian write-ups claim that the Maoists have been demanding almost half of Himanchal Pradesh and Uttaranchal belonging to Nepal that is also under the Chinese influence.

Here comes the US ambassador’s claim that recently the Maoists in Nepal are involved in importing low quality weapons from India to deposit at the cantonment sites while retaining their modern weapons. To add, in the aftermath of the peace agreement in Nepal, news reports had indicated that the Maoists were transferring their weapons into India. This implies that the Maoists in Nepal were involved in exchanging their high-quality China acquired sophisticated weapons with their revolutionary counterparts of the likes of ULFA and other Naxalite groups in India with their mediocre quality weapons with a proposition of acquiring them again if needed in Nepal.