India resumes ‘military exchanges’ with China

NEW DELHI: India will send a military delegation to China on Sunday, marking a resumption of defence ties that were frozen for a year over a visa row, government and defence officials said.

The eight-member delegation, headed by Major General Gurmeet Singh, will travel to Beijing and the north-western Chinese region of Xinjiang on the six-day visit, a senior defence official said on condition of anonymity.

India suspended military exchanges in July last year after Beijing refused to provide a proper stamped visa to the then head of India's Northern Army Command, which controls the region of Indian occupied Kashmir

"We decided to pause defence exchanges because of these differences of opinion," a second source in the government told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"There were still phone calls and other contacts, but now with this visit we are seeing the resumption of normal, full-scale military exchanges," said the official.

Major General Singh, the delegation chief, heads the Delta Force, part of a specialised anti-insurgency unit deployed in IoK.

Suspicion pervades relations between the two Asian giants amid border disputes over IoK and the north-eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Media reports suggested that the decision to resume defence cooperation was reached during talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Hu Jintao in China in April.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011