U-Turn: India To Send Small Military Team To China
Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 11:09 pm
U-Turn: India To Send Small Military Team To China
A 30 member Indian Military delegation scheduled to visit Beijing has been downsized by half, after China refused to grant a visa to a senior Indian Air Force officer from Arunachal Pradesh. The number of delegates has been scaled down to 15 from the original 30, the sources said.
Group Captain M Panging, the chief operations officer at the Sukhoi-30MKI fighter airbase at Tezpur, will, however, not be part of the truncated delegation. The talks, which took place almost a full two years after the previous round, were aimed at reinvigorating defence ties, which were only resumed last June.
It may be noted that China has consistently followed a policy of not giving visas to residents of Arunachal Pradesh, a region that Beijing considers as disputed. The visit was reciprocal to the one undertaken by the Chinese last month and is part of the confidence building measures between the two countries.
India has, in the past, avoided sending officials domiciled in the State for defence exchanges with China in light of Beijing’s visa policy. Indian traders say they do wonder about safety but they also know the commercial attractions of a place like Yiwu.
Given its over-cautious attitude about not doing anything to ruffle a prickly Beijing, India in the past has avoided sending officials hailing from Arunachal Pradesh for defence and other exchanges with China. There were reports that until Friday night the government was even considering the idea of putting off the trip.
To this extent, sources said, even the Ministry of External Affairs was surprised by the inclusion of an officer from Arunachal in the Air Force list. General Jaswal was to head a military delegation and an angry India cancelled that visit, besides putting on hold defence exchanges.
China has sparked a visa row with India in the past. Beijing claims Arunachal Pradesh as its territory and has been denying travel permits to those hailing from the northeastern state despite protests.
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