China is fishing in troubled waters in Lanka: Chidambaram

[Sambha]

China is using the ongoing crisis in Sri Lanka to expand its sphere of influence and that has impacted India’s response to the situation, said Home Minister P Chidambaram. “China is fishing in troubled waters. That is a lone, discordant voice among all of the global community,” he told Hindustan Times on Friday.

China is encouraging the Sri Lankan offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) while the rest of the world, including India, has called for a cessation of hostilities to enable civilians to escape. Fighting for a separate state for Tamil-speaking people, the LTTE has been declared a terrorist outfit by United Nations.

"China is acting with a clear agenda,” said Chidambaram. “Our policies take account of the Chinese calculations.” He said Pakistan also might have wanted to seek a foothold on the southern (maritime) border of India, but internal issues were holding it back. “They are not in a position to do something adventurous now,” he said.

The comments are significant as Lanka’s importance for Beijing is in the sea-lanes of communication in the north Indian Ocean through which Chinese trade and energy supplies flow.

“They want to secure the lanes by building strategic and defense ties with Colombo,” said Sujit Dutta, head of the East Asia Programme of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis.

Senior Chinese naval officials have often stated that “the Indian Ocean isn’t India’s” despite no such claim by New Delhi. In the conversation that spanned a range of political and security issues Chidambaram expressed satisfaction over his 150 days in office. He replaced Shivraj Patil on December 1, 2008 in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. He was finance minister till then.

“Our intelligence gathering and sharing are far more effective now than six months ago. State governments are responding to the situation with utmost urgency and are better equipped to deal with it should another terrorist attack take place,” he said.

The Home Hinister said India is trying to put pressure on Colombo and the LTTE to cease hostilities. "It’s a humanitarian crisis. We want the killings to stop. Unfortunately, neither the Sri Lankan government nor the LTTE is willing to listen to the international community,” he said.

Chidambaram said the advances made by the Taliban in Pakistan were “extremely worrisome” for India. “Large sections of Pakistan are under the control of the Taliban,” he said. However, the Home Minister did not endorse former NSA Brajesh Mishra’s fears that the Taliban could “get their hands” on nuclear weapons. “My impression is that there are adequate systems in Pakistan to secure them,” he said.


“Read my lips. We’ve made substantial progress…I am not at liberty to disclose details as some procedural formalities are still underway,” he said.

China is fishing in troubled waters in Lanka: Chidambaram- Hindustan Times

 

[Sambha]

For a whole myriad of news stories

 

[Omar1984]

hmmmm since when did the waters near Sri Lanka belong to India?

China is a close ally of Pakistan and Sri Lanka. I wouldn't mind if China came fishing near Pakistan, I dont think Sri Lanka minds either. China-Pakistan-Sri Lanka are all close allies of one another and we trust each other.

 

[Sambha]

^ near Baluchistan, you mean?

and Northern Sri Lanka will be Tamil Elam, if they continue to repress the populace. But I think they already did enough.

 

[Omar1984]

^ Balochistan is part of Pakistan just like Assam is part of India.

Quit dreaming of breaking Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

 

[Omar1984]

And what about the atrocities India commits against the Kashmiris in Indian Occupied Kashmir, which is not recognized by the interntaional community as part of India (LOC is not international borders) but Assam is recognized by the interntaional community as part of India just like Balochistan is recognized by the international community as part of Pakistan, and the borders of Sri Lanka is recognized by the international community as part of Sri Lanka.

Its only India who dreams about changing international borders.

BTW theres no proof Pakistan government or Pakistan army was involved in killings of those Baloch leaders.

 

[Sambha]

Dude Indian Army was not in civilian areas until the massacre of Kashmiri Pundits in 1989 in the hands of Pak trained militants. It was only then the Army moved in, otherwise they were deployed along the LoC.

And the LoC is called so because the Pak-occupied Kashmir is still outside India, and those parts that were presented as gifts to China by 'guess who?'.

 

[Omar1984]

^ Are you sure thats why UN and the international community calls it Line of Control or thats only India's reason for calling it LOC?

LOL...ask people in Pakistan's Azad Kashmir if they want their land to be part of India.

 

[Sambha]

LoC

I think the UN does too.

 

[Omar1984]

Theres numerous posts on Kashmir in this forum, you dont have to give an article from wikipedia. Back to the original post, Sri Lanka is a sovereign nation, if she seeks help from her friend China she has every right to. Sri Lanka and the waters surrounding Sri Lanka does not belong to India.

 

[s90]

Hmmm nice

 

[godsavetheworld]

China fuels Sri Lankan war: Lankan Newspaper
Saturday, 7 March 2009 - 8:40 PM SL Time



Sri Lanka, the once self-trumpeted `island of paradise,` turned into the island of bloodshed more than a quarter-century ago. But even by its long, gory record, the bloodletting since last year is unprecedented. The United Nations estimates that some 1,200 noncombatants are getting killed each month in a civil war that continues to evoke a muted international response even as hundreds of thousands of minority Tamils have fled their homes or remain trapped behind the front line.

With the world preoccupied by pressing challenges, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Defense Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a naturalized U.S. citizen, press on with their brutal military campaign with impunity. The offensive bears a distinct family imprint, with another brother the president`s top adviser.

Chinese military and financial support as in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Burma and elsewhere has directly aided government excesses and human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. But with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly emphasizing that the global financial, climate and security crises are more pressing priorities for U.S. policy than China`s human rights record, which by her own department`s recent admission has `remained poor and worsened in some areas,` Beijing has little reason to stop facilitating overseas what it practices at home repression.

Still, the more China insists that it doesnt mix business with politics in its foreign relations, the more evidence it provides of cynically contributing to violence and repression in internally torn states. Sri Lanka is just the latest case demonstrating Beijing`s blindness to the consequences of its aggressive pursuit of strategic interests.

No sooner had the United States ended direct military aid to Sri Lanka last year over its deteriorating human rights record than China blithely stepped in to fill the breach a breach widened by India`s hands-off approach toward Sri Lanka since a disastrous 1987-90 peacekeeping operation in that island-nation.

Beijing began selling larger quantities of arms, and dramatically boosted its aid fivefold in the past year to almost $1 billion to emerge as Sri Lanka`s largest donor. Chinese Jian-7 fighter jets, antiaircraft guns, JY-11 3D air surveillance radars and other supplied weapons have played a central role in the Sri Lankan military successes against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (or `Tamil Tigers`), seeking to carve out an independent homeland for the ethnic Tamils in the island`s north and east.

Beijing even got its ally Pakistan actively involved in Sri Lanka. With Chinese encouragement, Pakistan despite its own faltering economy and rising Islamist challenge has boosted its annual military assistance loans to Sri Lanka to nearly $100 million while supplying Chinese-origin small arms and training Sri Lankan air force personnel in precision guided attacks.

China has become an enabler of repression in a number of developing nations as it seeks to gain access to oil and mineral resources, to market its goods and to step up investment. Still officially a communist state, its support for brutal regimes is driven by capitalist considerations. But while exploiting commercial opportunities, it also tries to make strategic inroads. Little surprise thus that China`s best friends are pariah or other states that abuse human rights.

Indeed, with its ability to provide political protection through its U.N. Security Council veto power, Beijing has signed tens of billions of dollars worth of energy and arms contracts in recent years with such problem states from Burma and Iran to Sudan and Venezuela.

In the case of Sri Lanka, China has been particularly attracted by that country`s vantage location in the center of the Indian Ocean a crucial international passageway for trade and oilm . Hambantota the billion-dollar port Chinese engineers are now building on Sri Lanka`s southeast is the latest `pearl` in China`s strategy to control vital sea-lanes of communication between the Indian and Pacific Oceans by assembling a `string of pearls` in the form of listening posts, special naval arrangements and access to ports.

China indeed has aggressively moved in recent years to build ports in the Indian Ocean rim, including in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma. Besides eyeing Pakistan`s Chinese-built port-cum-naval base of Gwadar as a possible anchor for its navy, Beijing has sought naval and commercial links with the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar. However, none of the port-building projects it has bagged in recent years can match the strategic value of Hambantota, which sits astride the great trade arteries.

China`s generous military aid to Sri Lanka has tilted the military balance in favor of government forces, enabling them in recent months to unravel the de facto state the Tamil Tigers had run for years. After losing more than 5,594 square km of territory, the Tigers now are boxed into a 85-square-km sliver of wooded land in the northeast.

But despite the government`s battlefield triumphs, Asia`s longest civil war triggered by the bloody 1983 anti-Tamil riots is unlikely to end anytime soon. Not only is the government unable to define peace or outline a political solution to the Tamils` long-standing cultural and political grievances, the rebels are gearing up to return to their roots and become guerrilla fighters again after being routed in the conventional war.

While unable to buy peace, Chinese aid has helped weaken and scar civil society. Emboldened by the unstinted Chinese support, the government has set in motion the militarization of society and employed control of information as an instrument of war, illustrated by the muzzling of the media and murders of several independent-minded journalists. It has been frenetically swelling the ranks of the military by one-fifth a year through large-scale recruitment, even as it establishes village-level civilian militias, especially in conflict-hit areas.

With an ever-larger, Chinese-aided war machine, the conflict is set to grind on, making civil society the main loser. That is why international diplomatic intervention has become imperative. India, with its geostrategic advantage and trade and investment clout over a war-hemorrhagic Sri Lankan economy that is in search of an international bailout package, must use its leverage deftly to promote political and ethnic reconciliation rooted in federalism and genuine interethnic equality. More broadly, the U.S., European Union, Japan and other important players need to exert leverage to stop the Rajapaksa brothers from rebuffing ceasefire calls and press Beijing to moderate its unsettling role

China fuels Lanka war: Lankan Newspapers

 

[muse]

Hmm, Interesting. Humanitarian crisis and and all, but I think we are in for a far more interesting show in the not too distant future.

 

[godsavetheworld]

I couldnt agree less. When Chidambaram speaks out, it has to be something grave. Chinese have always wanted a greater role in the Indian ocean, but gaining it at the price of the "worst humanitarian crisis in the world" is tells us that Chinese dont mind getting their hands dirty if it gets their objective fulfilled.

 

[Sambha]

The World should gradually dwindle out of Chinese products.
<imho>