http://economictimes.
DIPANJAN ROY CHAUDHURY
MAY 09, 2017
NEW DELHI: India has rejected China’s contention that Beijing had never acknowledged Pakistan’s claims on parts of Jammu and Kashmir as final, underscoring its sustained opposition to the One Belt One Road (OBOR) project that New Delhi believes infringes sovereignty.
To overcome India’s resistance, China has revived its four-point proposal to overcome its differences with India and deepen relations by aligning its OBOR project with New Delhi’s ‘Act East Policy’, and restarting negotiations on a free-trade pact.
India, which is unlikely to attend the May 14-15 OBOR Summit in Beijing, has been opposed to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – the flagship project under OBOR as it passes through Pakoccupied Kashmir, infringing sovereignty.
The CPEC will link Kashgar in Xinjiang in China and a deep sea port at Gwadar in Balochistan in south-western Pakistan. The peace proposal put forward last week by Chinese envoy LuoZhaohui also includes starting negotiations on a ‘’China-India Treaty of Good Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation’’ and prioritising an early solution to the border dispute between the two countries. Luo in further outreach stated that China is not opposed to any country’s membership to the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), believing that a standard for admission should be agreed upon first.
However, it is unlikely that Beijing will change its previous position on criteria-based membership at the next NSG plenary mid-June in Switzerland.
Beijing had recently conveyed to New Delhi that the title and Article 6 of its 1963 agreement with Islamabad showed that China not only recognized Kashmir as an issue of territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, but also remained open to renegotiate the agreement after India and Pakistan settled the dispute, persons familiar with the matter indicated.
Delhi, however, made it clear to Beijing that it considered the 1963 China-Pakistan boundary agreement itself as “illegal and invalid,” said one of the persons quoted above. Beijing tried to convey to Delhi that its 54-year-old agreement with Islamabad recognised Pakistan’s claim on the disputed territory only as an interim measure, pending the settlement of its dispute with India. Beijing also claimed that the contents of the Sino-Pak boundary pact adequately “accommodated the concerns” of India.
The pact Beijing signed with Islamabad in 1963 was titled “Agreement Between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of Pakistan on the Boundary Between China’s Xinjiang and the Contiguous Areas the Defence of Which is Under the Actual Control of Pakistan”.
Article 6 of provides that when India and Pakistan would settle the Kashmir dispute, “the sovereign authority concerned would reopen negotiations with the government of the People’s Republic of China, on the boundary as described in Article 2 of the present agreement, so as to sign a formal Boundary Treaty to replace the present agreement.”
It is well known that Islamabad illegally ceded 5180 square kms of India’s territory to China through the pact. Beijing already pledged to invest $ 62 billion in the CPEC. Speaking at a closed door meet at the United Services Institute here last Friday, Ambassador Luo not only put forward the peace proposal, but also said that China is willing to mediate to resolve Indo-Pak differences if both sides accept it. “When the Mumbai terrorist Attack on November 26, 2008, took place, I was the Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan, and I did a lot of mediation at that time,” he claimed.
