Never considered Pakistan claim on Kashmir final: China

To soften New Delhi's opposition to its Belt-and-Road initiative; China of late told India that it had never acknowledged Pakistan's claim on the disputed territory of Kashmir as final.

Beijing referred to its 54-year-old agreement with Islamabad to drive home the point that it had recognized Pakistan's claim on the disputed territory only as an interim measure, pending the settlement of its row with India.

China put forward the argument recently as a last ditch attempt to persuade India to stop opposing its One-Belt-One-Road project ahead of the conclave of foreign leaders, which Chinese President Xi Jinping is going to host in Beijing on May 14 and 15 to drum up support for his ambitious cross-continental connectivity initiative.

Beijing of late pointed it out to New Delhi that not only the title of its 1963 border agreement with Pakistan, but also its content adequately “accommodated the concerns” of India, sources told the DH.

Twenty-eight Heads of States and Heads of Governments will attend the conclave in Beijing, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not be among them. New Delhi has not yet committed its support to the OBOR, mainly because it is opposed to one of its key components – China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The corridor is proposed to pass through areas that New Delhi claims to be an integral part of Jammu and Kashmir state of India, despite being under illegal occupation of Pakistan.

The CPEC will link Kashgar in Xinjiang in north-western China and a deep sea port at Gwadar in Balochistan in south-western Pakistan. New Delhi has been arguing that it would infringe upon the sovereignty of India.

The pact Beijing signed with Islamabad in 1963 was titled “Agreement Between the Government of the People's Republic of China and the Government of Pakistan on the Boundary Between China's Xinjiang and the Contiguous Areas the Defence of Which is Under the Actual Control of Pakistan”.

The Article 6 of the agreement provides that when India and Pakistan would settle the Kashmir dispute, “the sovereign authority concerned would reopen negotiations with the Government of the People's Republic of China, on the boundary as described in Article Two of the present Agreement, so as to sign a formal Boundary Treaty to replace the present agreement.”

During recent diplomatic contacts, Beijing conveyed to New Delhi that the title and Article 6 of its 1963 agreement with Islamabad clearly showed that China not only recognized Kashmir as an issue of territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, but also remained open to renegotiate the agreement after India and Pakistan settled the dispute, sources in New Delhi told the DH.

New Delhi, however, was not convinced, and made it clear to Beijing that it considered the 1963 China-Pakistan boundary agreement itself as “illegal and invalid”. Islamabad illegally ceded 5180 square kilometer of India's territory to China through the pact, sources said.

Beijing already pledged to invest $ 62 billion along the CPEC in areas under control of Pakistan.

Geng Shuang, a spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chinese Government, recently told journalists in Beijing that the CPEC would not affect any change in China's position on India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir. “We always believe that Kashmir is an issue left over from the history between India and Pakistan, which we hope will be properly addressed by the two sides through consultation and negotiation,” said Geng.