By IANS,
New Delhi : India Wednesday said it valued China’s friendship but urged Beijing to be “sensitive to each other’s concerns (and) aspirations” and address all outstanding issues through dialogue.
“Each side should be sensitive to each other’s concerns, aspirations and sentiments,” Krishna said in his reply during a debate on China in the Lok Sabha.
Krishna espoused a “forward-looking approach” to bilateral relations and underlined the need for expanding relations in “an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect based on an understanding of each other’s positions”.
Describing negotiations over the boundary dispute as “a complex and time-consuming process”, he emphasised that the issue “should not be allowed to affect functional cooperation between the two countries in … areas like trade”.
The border dispute, which sparked a war in 1962, can only be resolved peacefully through dialogue and negotiations, the minister said, while asserting that Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing claims, was an integral part of India.
Krishna said that his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi had assured him that Beijing would adhere to the principles of peaceful co-existence.
Krishna’s comments came after the opposition accused the government of misleading the country over reported Chinese incursions in Ladakh as well as Arunachal Pradesh.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Murli Manohar Joshi also asked the government to forge close relations with influential international players who could help India in case of a confrontation with China.
“In the last two-three years, we have seen an aggressive China. In the Nuclear Suppliers Group, China opposed India tooth and nail,” Joshi said.
Joshi cited China’s opposition to a loan from the Asian Development Bank for a project in Arunachal Pradesh and Beijing’s supply of sensitive technologies to Pakistan as examples of growing Chinese aggressiveness.
Asking the government to formulate a long-term China policy, the BJP contended that the US and China had been quietly developing an economic and strategic relationship all these years.
“But we ignored this and as a result we could not make any long-term China policy,” he said. “China and the United States will eventually divide the world among themselves.
“My apprehension is whether the US will come to India’s rescue if some part of India is encroached by China,” Joshi said.