Modi urged to stand up to China

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has performed much better than his predecessor in handling China. Those were the views of former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal and former ambassador T.P. Sreenivasan at an event here Wednesday evening.

They were discussing Sreenivasan's book "Applied Diplomacy Through the Prism of Mythology" published by Wisdom Tree.

Sibal said although Modi started very well by "standing up to Chinese President Xi Jinping" on his India visit, New Delhi needs to do more in view of the major collaboration between China and Pakistan, especially in the Pakistan-held Kashmir region.

Prime Minister Modi begins his five-day China visit on May 14 as a part of a three-nation East Asia tour that will also take him to Mongolia and South Korea.

Sibal said: "India's reticence to speak out against China's provocation was a big failing of the previous government. The present government began well.

"When Xi Jinping came, Modi decided to stand up to him and in the joint press statement, he spoke about the border incidents and the need to clarify the Line of Actual Control."

However, since then, said Sibal, "there has been bit of a slip back. We have the China-Pakistan economic corridor which goes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. And we have not said anything.

"If you look at the 1963 agreement between Pakistan and China, it clearly states that the future of the territory has to be finalised and depending on which country then gets the legal ownership of the territory, China will renegotiate the agreement with that country.

"We have such a good case on this, such a good point of pressure as China is pursuing a policy which is contradictory to its own stand on Arunachal Pradesh, yet we have not done anything about it."

Discussing India-US relations, Sreenivasan said the nuclear deal between US and India was never about building nuclear reactors.

It was more symbolic of the growing confidence between the two countries as the US anyway hasn't built a new reactor in the last 20 years.