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India, China voice differences over developments in Kashmir

Kashmir Times. Dated: 8/13/2019 10:43:35 AM

BEIJING, Aug 12 (Agencies): India and China on Monday voiced their differences over the recent developments in Kashmir, with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar calling upon Beijing not to deviate from the gains of the Wuhan informal summit and Astana consensus and his counterpart Wang Yi urging New Delhi to make special efforts to build regional peace.
“When it comes to the regional tensions between India and Pakistan and possible ramifications, we follow these developments very closely. We hope that India would also play a constructive role for regional peace and stability,” Wang said.
His remarks follow his meeting in Beijing on Thursday with his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who dashed to the Chinese capital after India revoked the special status to Jammu and Kashmir on August 5.
During that meeting, Wang opened the door for a United Nations intervention, apart from proposing that “bilateral agreement” (a veiled reference to the 1972 Shimla accord) act as the template for resolving the Kashmir issue.
Mr. Wang, who is also China’s state councillor (a higher-ranking position than Foreign Minister), stressed that the Kashmir issue “should be properly and peacefully resolved based on the UN charter, relevant Security Council resolutions and bilateral agreement”, according to the Chinese foreign ministry readout.
After concluding his visit to China, Qureshi said at a press conference in Islamabad that Beijing shared Pakistan’s intent to take the latest situation in Kashmir to the Security Council.
In his remarks, Jaishankar reminded Wang that two years ago Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, during a meeting in Astana, recognised that the India-China relationship had a very unique place in global politics. They had “reached a consensus… that at a time of global uncertainty, India China relationship be a factor of stability”.
The Minister also reiterated that whenever tensions rose, both countries should automatically make a conscious effort to ease frictions, to ensure that “differences between us, if any, should not become disputes”.
He also counselled his counterpart that it was important to build public support for the relationship there should not be any deviation from the understanding, built over the years, of “being sensitive to each other’s core concerns, by managing our differences properly, and by working on the positive convergences that we have on the relationship”.
Besides, Jaishankar signalled that the two countries should not fritter away the gains of last year’s Wuhan informal summit between Xi and Modi. Referring to the Wuhan meeting as “a matter of great of satisfaction,” he said that during their interaction there, the two leaders had “a very deep and constructive and open exchange”.
He added: “We have seen the impact of that in our bilateral relations also. Today I think we are looking at the effort (that) while our leaders give guidance to growth of our relationship, I hope that today the discussions we have help us translate those convergences into many more shared activities and collaborations.”