CALCUTTA, 5 October 2004 — India’s army chief will fly to China in December to strengthen ties between the armed forces of nuclear neighbors trying to bury bitter memories of a 1962 border war.
The Asian Age newspaper reported yesterday that the dates and itinerary of Gen. N.C. Vij’s visit to China are being finalized by India’s Defense Ministry and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Confirming the story, an aide to Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee told Arab News in Calcutta that Chief of the Army Staff Gen Vij, accompanied by senior commanders, would visit Beijing and other Chinese cities during his landmark tour.
Analysts say that both armies are trying to exorcise the ghost of the 1962 war through confidence-building measures chalked out during the high-profile visit China’s Defense Minister Gen. Cao Gangchuan to India in March.
Since Gen. Cao’s visit — the first by a Chinese defense minister since September 1994 — India and China have stepped up exchanges to build mutual trust and overcome suspicions and rivalry.
Last month, Beijing invited Indian Army officers to witness the military exercise code-named “Iron Fist-2004” in the training base of the Jinan Military Area Command of the PLA.
It was the first time India was invited to China’s largest military exercise carried out with live ammunition by a mechanized infantry division in the mountains of central China’s Henan province.
It was preceded by the first joint mountaineering exercise by the PLA and the Indian Army to promote friendship. Forty officers and soldiers from the two armies together scaled Point 4450, a mountain in Tibet’s Burang region. Before that, on Aug. 15, a PLA contingent joined India’s independence day celebrations at a strategic border post in the Himalayas for the first time.
And last week, on China’s National Day, an Indian Army team crossed the border to visit a Chinese town.
On Oct. 1, 50 Indian Army officers, soldiers and their families, visited a remote outpost near the Bumla Pass on southwest China’s Himalayan border with Arunachal Pradesh.
The PLA even allowed five Indian journalists to accompany the guests.
“Our relations are improving and there is no question of a war,” a journalist quoted PLA Col. Chen Yen-hui saying as he supervised the celebrations. “China and India will be friends forever.”
His Indian counterpart, Brig. Vikram Raghavan, said: “Since we started these confidence-building exercises and reciprocal visits, tensions have eased on what once was a very sensitive frontier.
“Violation of each other’s territory, incursions by patrols have come down sharply. We have little to complain about each other these days.”
