Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 11

China today again lived up to its reputation of being Pakistan’s strong ally and friend when it questioned India’s claims of Pakistan being behind the Uri terror attack and further labelled India’s decision to fence the India-Pak border as ‘irrational’.The comments were made by some leading Chinese experts and carried in Global Times, a newspaper which is known to be close to the Chinese Government and is viewed primarily as a channel to promote and reflect the perspective of the Chinese Government.Post the Uri attack, India has tried to show to the world Pakistan’s complicity in the attacks and the Chinese statement today is a setback.“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,” Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow from the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, is quoted by the Global Times on Monday.China’s reaction to India’s decision to seal the 3,323-km border with Pakistan by December 2018 is also a bit of a shocker. Hu is quoted as saying that this action was reflective of the “Cold War mentality” and that this “would only cause deeper hatred among residents living in India and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir”.On Monday, China had accused India of trying to make political gains by insisting on the United Nations ban on Jaish Chief Masood Azar as an international terrorist. Even on the entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), while China seems open to talks, it is quite clear that it would never let India into the club without dragging the case of Pakistan’s membership alongside.On Saturday, PM Narendra Modi is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Goa. Sources have indicated that Modi will again raise the issue of India’s entry into the NSG with Xi. However, in light of the series of comments coming out of China in the past two days, the meeting between the two leaders is likely to yield no results

HM to brief regional media on Oct 17

• Home Minister Rajnath Singh would address nearly 150 editors of the regional media in Chandigarh on October 17 to explain them the state of the country’s internal security scenario and also the prevailing situation along the India-Pakistan border
• The two-day event would see participants from Haryana, Punjab, Himachal, J&K, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and other Northeastern states