New Delhi: In the wake of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, a Chinese government official on Tuesday said Beijing is ready to provide "full assistance" to resolve the conflict between its “all-weather friend” Islamabad and New Delhi.
According to a Pakistani TV channel, Yuwan, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's counsellor for China-Asia, said: "We will try our level best to resolve the conflict between Pakistan and India. We are ready to provide our full assistance.”
"The hostility not only affects both states but also affects the entire South Asian region," Yuwan said, as per Channel24, a private TV channel in Pakistan.
On China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) issue, Yuwan said: "The project is a game changer and with the cooperation of Pakistan, it will be accomplished", reported The Times of India.
Earlier in the day, China's state-run media quoted leading experts as saying that India's move to completely seal its border with Pakistan was a "very irrational decision" and would further complicate India-China relations considering Beijing's "all-weather" strategic ties with Islamabad.
"India is making a very irrational decision, since no exhaustive investigation has been conducted after the Uri incident, and no evidence proves Pakistan is behind the attack," the Global Times quoted Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the official think tank `Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy`, as saying.
Hu was commenting on Home Minister Rajnath Singh's announcement on Friday that the 3,323-km-long border between India and Pakistan would be "completely sealed" by December 2018.
A "completely sealed" border would further hinder the already scarce border trade and talks between the two countries, Hu said.
Wang Dehua, the director of the Institute for Southern and Central Asian Studies at the Shanghai Municipal Centre for International Studies, said that a sealed border would only disrupt peace efforts made by the two sides.
