India, China troops face off again
NEW DELHI — Indian and Chinese troops have locked horns again along their disputed border, Indian officials said Monday, in a sign that the deadly tensions that erupted in June between the world’s two most populous countries are not going away.
In a terse and somewhat cryptic statement, India’s defense ministry said the Chinese army had “violated the previous consensus” and “carried out provocative military movements” near Pangong Tso Lake, in the remote Ladakh region.
Indian army officers and security analysts said Chinese troops landed a few days ago on the southern side of the lake, which traditionally has been considered Indian territory — a move the Indians saw as the latest example of Chinese aggression in a long string of provocations.
The move provoked a standoff and then a rapid buildup. Troops from both sides yelled at each other and surged to within a yard or two before commanding officers from both sides pulled them apart. No punches were thrown and no one was injured, the analysts said, and the incident was much less severe than the vicious hockey-brawl type of melee that exploded in June in roughly the same area, when 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops were killed.
But China was emphatic that it had done nothing wrong. Chinese troops respect the border, known as the Line of Actual Control, said Zhao Lijian, spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, and Chinese troops “never crossed the line.”
Senior Col. Zhang Shuili, a spokesman for the Western Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army, went further, accusing the Indian military of “blatant provocation” and ruining the agreement the two sides had reached over the area by making illegal incursions.
“This action by the Indian side has seriously violated Chinese territorial sovereignty, and seriously damaged the peace and stability of the Chinese-Indian border region,” Zhang said, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency. He demanded that India immediately withdraw its forces and “strictly control and constrain frontline troops.”
“Chinese troops are taking necessary measures in response and will closely monitor developments,” he said.
The trouble seems to reflect that despite all the diplomatic activity between the two sides, the border remains a raw flash point in an increasingly nationalistic era.