Beijing: Sounding upbeat over the
resumption of defence exchanges with India, China Thursday said
it was "vigorously committed" to developing military ties with
its "important neighbour" and was ready to resolve the visa
row through friendly consultation.
Replying to a question on the resumption of defence
exchanges agreed upon at yesterday`s meeting between Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese president Hu Jintao on the
sidelines of the BRICS summit, Chinese foreign ministry
spokesman Hong Lie told a media briefing that China always
valued military ties with India.
"India is an important neighbour of China. China is
vigorously committed to developing military to military
relations with India," Hong said.
After a considerable pause, India is set to restore
full defence cooperation with China, with a high-level Indian
military delegation expected to visit this country in June.
The decision to send a military delegation to China
marks an end to the freeze on high-level defence exchanges by
India after the then Northern Army Commander Lt Gen B S Jaswal
was denied a proper visa in July last year for travel to
Beijing because he served in Jammu and Kashmir.
"China always values our military exchanges with India
and believes the two sides could proceed from the overall
interest of bilateral relations, follow the principal of
seeking a common ground while solving differences to promote
sound and stable development of military relations," the
spokesman said.
The Indian decision comes amid apparent moves by China
to reverse its two-year policy of giving stapled visas to
people hailing from Jammu and Kashmir.
To a question on whether China has ended the policy of
issuing stapled visas to Kashmiri residents in India, Hong
said: "I would like to point out that for issues relating to
people to people exchanges in our relations, we are ready to
properly solve this issue through friendly consultation".
PTI
