By IANS
New Delhi : China has conveyed its displeasure to India over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Arunachal Pradesh and protested his statements asserting India’s claims over the northeastern state.
“An informal verbal protest was made by junior Chinese officers to the Indian embassy in Beijing. There is no formal protest by China as yet,” an official source said here.
China has told India that it was not proper to make such comments when the two countries were trying to resolve their decades-old boundary dispute, the source added.
China has, however, officially refrained from commenting on the visit of Manmohan Singh to Itanagar. Both the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson and the state-controlled Xinhua news agency chose to ignore the event.
During his visit to Itanagar last week, which took place soon after his trip to China last month, Manmohan Singh called Arunachal as “our land of the rising sun” – an expression that was not liked by Beijing for obvious reasons.
“The sun kisses India first in Arunachal Pradesh. It is our land of the rising sun. I sincerely hope that like the sun, Arunachal Pradesh will rise from the East as a new star and become one of the best regions of our country,” Manmohan Singh said.
Ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to India in 2006, the then Chinese ambassador Sun Yuxi re-asserted China’s claim over Arunachal Pradesh that was quickly countered by India.