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India 'succumbs' to Chinese pressure on Arunachal at WB meet
Bharti Jain, ET Bureau, Mar 6, 2010, 04.25am IST
NEW DELHI: A World Bank document says external affairs minister SM Krishna has stated that "India will not pose any Arunachal Pradesh-specific project" to the Bank, and that the Chinese executive director at the Bank is pressing for the operationalisation of this statement.
Verbally, India's executive director, Pulok Chatterjee, has conveyed to the Bank that the government of India would not pose any Arunachal Pradesh-specific project to the Bank for financing.
"I also took the liberty to say that the names of the individual states would not be mentioned anywhere in the project document, and that the government of India would not be posing any Arunachal Pradesh-specific projects to the World Bank," Mr Chatterjee wrote in a communication to finance secretary Ashok Chawla dated February 12.
This amounts to conceding Chinas persistent claims of Arunachal Pradesh being a "disputed territory" and runs contrary to the stated opinion that the state is "an integral part of India".
It may be recalled that it was only eight months ago that the Indian government had sharply attacked Beijing for criticising Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs visit to Arunachal Pradesh and his reference to the state as "our land of the rising sun". During the verbal skirmishes with Beijing at the juncture, India had said China has no business to interfere in the affairs of a territory that is an integral part of India.
The shift appears all the more strange as it was only recently that India refused an ADB loan for an Arunachal project after China raised "disputed territory" objections. India had then said "all projects in sensitive areas will be funded by our own resources".
What is more surprising is that the oblique acceptance of the Beijing line on Arunachal at the World Bank meeting on February 12, attended by Mr Chatterjee, ED-China Shaolin Yang, and World Bank general counsel (legal) and vice-president, South Asia division, came about without the Union Cabinets consent.
At the meeting, China's ED insisted on the operationalisation of Mr Krishnas statement, even as the World Bank general counsel and vice-president clarified that the Banks disclaimer clause, invoked whenever a national or state-level project is to be implemented in an area over which two member countries are in dispute, would not be triggered for the projects being presently funded by World Bank.
Mr Chatterjee, on his own, offered not to name individual states in the project document or seek World Bank assistance for projects to be implemented in Arunachal.
In his letter to Mr Chawla soon after the meeting, Mr Chatterjee referred to the Chinese objections to national projects such as SSA and vocational training and shared some of the points he had made during the deliberations.
He revealed that these were national projects under implementation for many years and that the World Bank assistance was by way of budgetary support. "Both these projects received World Bank assistance earlier without the disclaimer clause being triggered and without any objection from China... the present assistance being considered was more like additional financing of the earlier projects," he argued.
Stating that the Indian government was in any case meeting the bulk of the costs of these programmes from its own resources, with the World Bank and DFID contributing only a small percentage of the costs, Mr Chatterjee, however, said India was willing to respect the World Banks policy on disclaimer clause.
"We value Chinas support and a difference of opinion on this would cause our government much dismay," he underlined. Mr Chatterjee concluded by saying that the names of individual states "would not be mentioned anywhere in the project document and that the government of India would not be posing any Arunachal Pradesh-specific projects to the World Bank".
When the general counsel said the Bank was willing to consider incorporating the disclaimer clause as a general clause in all agreements for all projects for all countries in the future, which the Chinese ED backed, Mr Chatterjee said though he would support this, "but since the matter may take some time to finalise, this should not be made a condition for the projects presently under consideration".
This was reluctantly agreed to by Chinas ED, who, however, insisted on putting it on record. Finally, an agreement was reached that VP-South Asia would issue a "confidential" record of discussions listing the points raised by the Chinese ED and Mr Chatterjee.
This record will be retained only by World Banks South Asia division office, the general counsels office, the Chinese EDs office and Mr Chatterjees office.
India 'succumbs' to Chinese pressure on Arunachal at WB meet - India - The Times of India