India Takes Tough Stance With China On Border

New Delhi: Smiles rarely left the faces of the top leaders of India and China here Thursday, but India's new prime minister sent a tough message to his Chinese guest by pressing him for a resolution to a border dispute that has escalated abruptly. (Read)

A large contingent of Indian troops, which one official said numbered in the thousands, was mobilized Thursday to face an equivalent number of Chinese troops in Ladakh, Kashmir, a largely high-altitude, barren Himalayan landscape where jingoism and military conflict have dominated for decades. (Ladakh Standoff Turns a Loudspeaker War on Day 2 of Chinese President Xi Jinping's Visit)

Only India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, could have ordered such a mobilization, said Mohan Guruswamy, a military analyst with the Observer Research Foundation.

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, is in the middle of a three-day Indian visit that has been billed as the beginning of a great economic and political partnership. Several deals, including for high-speed trains and economic zones, had been promised at a total price tag that officials hinted could reach as much as $100 billion - nearly three times what Japan, China's foremost Asian rival, recently promised to India.

But Modi made clear to the Chinese that India's patience with an uncertain border situation had worn thin and that any crop of deals must await a territorial resolution, analysts said.

"The prime minister sent a very strong signal that the Chinese have to agree to a fixed line of actual control before we start doing serious business with them," Guruswamy said.

Instead of $100 billion in deals, the sides agreed to a target of infrastructure and industrial development valued at $20 billion to $50 billion. In a news media briefing, Modi made some of the most pointed remarks about the border uncertainty that any Indian leader has uttered in decades.

"I raised our serious concern over repeated incidents along the border," Modi said.

"While our border-related agreements and confidence-building measures have worked well, I also suggested that clarification of the Line of Actual Control would greatly contribute to our efforts to maintain peace and tranquility and requested President Xi to resume the stalled process of clarifying the LAC," he added, referring to the countries' shared border.

India has been pressing China for years to delineate a boundary, hundreds of miles of which are in dispute. Both sides have built up their military presence in the region in recent years.

"We've always been the ones pressing for a defined and well-controlled line of control, but the Chinese have always been very evasive about it and have refused to give us a map," said K. Shankar Bajpai, a former Indian ambassador to China.

Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads India's government, long complained that the previous government under Manmohan Singh was too timid with Pakistan and China on territorial disputes and incursions. Last year, when a Chinese platoon camped out for weeks in Ladakh, Singh sought mostly to defuse the crisis. Indian officials had said then that China had created the standoff.

But Indian analysts seemed happy to concede that their side was largely to blame for this escalation. "The Indians have normally been very placatory," Guruswamy said. "But this time, it's India's show of force."

Indian military and paramilitary officials declined to provide official comment. A call to the press line of the Chinese Foreign Ministry was not answered.

Bajpai, the former ambassador, said Modi was clearly sending a message to China.

"And his message is that it's all very nice to talk about business," Bajpai said, "but this territorial stuff is not an area where you can play ducks and drakes with us as you have in the past."