India’s ambassador to China on Tuesday assuaged Beijing’s concerns over the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, describing them as misplaced. Ambassador Vikram Misri made the comments at his first press conference since the Indian administration’s August 5 declaration.
“Ambassador also pointed out that the change was an internal administrative reorganization, had no external ramifications whatsoever, and was intended to enable good governance and provide social and economic justice to the people of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, affording them the same rights available to citizens in other parts of India,” a statement from the Indian Embassy in China said. Misri added that India’s decisions had no implications for “either external boundaries of India or the Line of Actual Control”.
India and China have 3,488-km long Line of Actual Control between them. The two countries have so far held 21 rounds of Special Representatives talks to resolve the boundary dispute.
India would not raise any “additional territorial claims”, the envoy said. He said that the Chinese and Indian administrations had reached a mutually acceptable settlement based on the 2005 Political Parameters and Guiding Principles. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, during his visit to China, had also spoken about this and called the decisions in Jammu and Kashmir an “internal matter”.
Misri also talked about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statements at the G7 summit in France that the disputes between India and Pakistan were completely bilateral and that no other country should be troubled with it. “The recent informal consultations of the UN Security Council in New York had also indicated that India-Pakistan issues were bilateral and could only be resolved bilaterally,” the envoy said.
On the topic of the upcoming Informal Summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Modi, scheduled for later this year, the envoy said the two leaders could discuss regional, international and bilateral matters. Following India’s decision to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and split the region into two Union Territories, China had raised its opposition in two separate statements.
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