In this photo taken on April 5, 2023, Indian Army soldiers stand in front of the Jaswantgarh War Memorial in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Arun Sankar | AFP | Getty Images
India’s Ministry of External Affairs said on Tuesday that China had made “ridiculous claims” over Arunachal Pradesh, adding that the northeastern state bordering China would always be “an integral part of India”.
China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet. New Delhi rejected the claim, saying Arunachal Pradesh has always been part of India.
“Repeating baseless arguments in this regard does not lend any validity to such claims,” Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Tuesday.
He was responding to remarks made last week by Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Zhang Xiaogang, days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a road tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh on March 9.
India should “stop taking any actions that complicate border issues and effectively maintain peace and stability in the border areas,” Zhang said in a statement, adding that the opening of the tunnel “is in line with the efforts made by both sides to ease the border situation.” Efforts go in the opposite direction.”
The two nuclear-armed neighbors share a 3,000-kilometer (1,860-mile) border, much of which is ill-defined. In 2020, at least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers were killed in clashes on the western Himalayan border.
Since those clashes, both countries’ militaries have strengthened their positions along the border and deployed additional troops and equipment. In 1962, a border war broke out between the two sides.
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