China warns India over Dalai trip

BEIJING — China is warning of “severe damage” to relations with India and increased regional instability if exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama proceeds with a visit to a disputed area along their stillunsettled border.

Beijing has expressed its concerns to New Delhi on numerous occasions and urged India to “avoid offering a state for the Dalai Lama to carry out anti-China separatist activities,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a daily briefing Friday.

“The invitation to the Dalai Lama by the Indian side to the contested area between China and India will inflict severe damage on the ChinaIndia relationship and peace and stability in the China-India border area,” Geng said.

The highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism was to visit Arunachal Pradesh in coming weeks. China claims the partly ethnically Tibetan Himalayan state as its own territory and the frontier between the two nuclear-armed Asian giants remains tense more than 50 years after they fought a brief but bloody border war high in the peaks.

China claims about 90,000 sq. km in Arunachal Pradesh, referred to informally by some Chinese as “Southern Tibet.” India says China is occupying 38,000 sq. km of its territory on the Aksai Chin plateau.

More than a dozen rounds of talks have failed to make substantial progress on the dispute, although there have been relatively few confrontations in recent years.

The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India after a failed anti-Chinese uprising in 1959. He last visited Arunachal Pradesh in 2009 and while China protested the trip, there was no major impact on relations with India.

GETTY IMAGES FILES The Dalai Lama is seen at Tsugla Khang Temple in Mcleodganj, India in November, 2016. China is warning India of damage to relations if the Dalai Lama is allowed to visit a disputed border area between the two countries.

BEN CURTIS/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Camel herders scoop up water from one of the few watering holes in the area, to water their animals near the drought-affected village of Bandarero, near the Ethiopian border, in northern Kenya on Friday.