A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Diplomacy to defuse India, China border crisis slams into a wall - sources
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's diplomatic efforts to end a seven-week
military standoff with China have hit a roadblock, people briefed on the
talks said, prompting Chinese state-run media to trumpet rhetoric of
"unavoidable countermeasures" on the unmarked border.
China has insisted that India unilaterally withdraw its troops from the
remote Doklam plateau claimed by both Beijing and Indian ally Bhutan.
But China did not respond to India's suggestion in the talks that it
move its troops back 250 metres (820 ft) in return, said one source with
close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.
In the low-key diplomatic manoeuvres that took place outside the public
eye, the Chinese countered with an offer to move back 100 metres (328
ft), so long as they received clearance from top government officials.
But there has been no comeback since, except for China's mounting
warnings of an escalation in the region, which it calls Donglang.
"It is a logjam, there is no movement at all now," said a second source with knowledge of the talks.
In Beijing, China's Foreign Ministry, which has repeatedly urged India
to withdraw, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the
state of talks.
Indian troops went into Doklam in mid-June to stop a Chinese
construction crew from extending a road India's military says will bring
China's army too close for comfort in the northeast.
Their faceoff since, military experts say, is the most serious since
going toe-to-toe in the 1980s, with thousands of soldiers each,
elsewhere along the 3,500-km (2,175-mile) border.
China has held off going to war in the hope New Delhi would see reason,
the state-run Global Times, which has kept up a barrage of hostile
commentary, said on Tuesday.
"If the Narendra Modi government continues ignoring the warning coming
from a situation spiralling out of control, countermeasures from China
will be unavoidable," it said.
The border crisis caps a year of souring diplomatic ties between the
Asian giants, even though trade between the fast growing economies is
rising rapidly.
India has grown concerned at China's ties to its arch rival Pakistan,
viewing their trade corridor across Kashmir as an infringement of its
claim to the whole of the region.
Modi refused to join President Xi Jinping's signature Belt and Road
initiative to knit together Asia and beyond, making India the lone
country to boycott a summit in May.
China has warned New Delhi not to be drawn into a Western military
alliance led by the United States and including Japan. Modi has sought
closer ties with both.
"There will be no happy ending for this confrontation," Indian foreign
policy expert C. Raja Mohan wrote in the Indian Express newspaper,
adding that India was unlikely to give in.
The second source said the worry was the standoff could drag on into a summit of BRICs nations China is hosting next month.
LIVE MANOEUVRES
Indian military officials say there is no troop buildup on either side,
nearly two months into a standoff that involved about 300 soldiers just
100 metres (328 ft) apart on a plateau 3,000 m (10,000 ft) above sea
level.
China has accused India of massing troops, however, and state media have
warned against a fate worse than its defeat in a brief border war in
1962.
"We will keep engaging with China to resolve the dispute. War cannot
solve problems," Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj told parliament,
sticking to a conciliatory stance.
Still, both have flexed their muscles.
Last month, China held live-fire drills on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau near the site of the standoff, state media said.
India's army ran low-key exercises in the Ladakh sector of the western
Himalayas, where previous disputes have flared, though it is thousands
of miles distant from Doklam.
Additional reporting by Ben; Blanchard in BEIJING and Fayaz Bukhari in SRINAGAR; Editing by Clarence Fernandez