NEW DELHI (AP) — India is protesting a brand new Chinese map that lays declare to India’s territory forward of subsequent week’s Group of 20 summit in New Delhi, a overseas ministry official mentioned, exacerbating tensions throughout a three-year army standoff between the 2 nations.

The timing of the protest is vital, as Chinese President Xi Jinping is anticipated to attend the summit of industrialized and creating nations.

“We reject these claims as they have no basis. Such steps by the Chinese side only complicate the resolution of the boundary question,” the External Affairs Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi mentioned in an announcement on Tuesday.

He mentioned India on Tuesday formally lodged the objection by diplomatic channels with the Chinese facet on the so-called 2023 “standard map” of China that lays declare to India’s territory.

The model of the Chinese map revealed on the web site of the Ministry of Natural Resources clearly reveals Arunachal Pradesh and the Doklam Plateau, over which the 2 sides have feuded, included inside Chinese borders, together with Aksai Chin within the western part which China controls however India nonetheless claims.

Indian External Affairs Minister Jaishankar Subhramanyam additionally dismissed China’s declare in a tv interview on Tuesday night time.

“Making absurd claims on India’s territory does not make it China’s territory,” Jaishankar mentioned.

China just lately refused to place visas within the passports of officers from Arunachal Pradesh state in India‘s northeast, using a stapled-in certificate instead. It also refuses to recognize India’s sovereignty over its a part of Kashmir and declined to ship a delegation to a G20 assembly in Srinagar in May.

Last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi informally spoke to China’s President Xi on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, the place Modi highlighted New Delhi’s issues about their unresolved border points.

India‘s overseas ministry mentioned the 2 leaders agreed to accentuate efforts to de-escalate tensions on the disputed border between them and produce dwelling hundreds of their troops deployed there.

The disputed boundary has led to a three-year standoff between tens of hundreds of Indian and Chinese troopers within the Ladakh space. A conflict three years in the past within the area killed 20 Indian troopers and 4 Chinese.

“The two sides should bear in mind the overall interests of their bilateral relations and handle properly the border issue so as to jointly safeguard peace and tranquility in the border region,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry mentioned after the 2 leaders’ assembly.

Indian and Chinese army commanders had met earlier this month in an obvious effort to stabilize the scenario. A border, dubbed the “Line of Actual Control,” separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh within the west to India’s jap state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety.

India and China had fought a conflict over their border in 1962. China claims some 90,000 sq. kilometers (35,000 sq. miles) of territory in India’s northeast, together with Arunachal Pradesh with its primarily Buddhist inhabitants.

India says China occupies 38,000 sq. kilometers (15,000 sq. miles) of its territory within the Aksai Chin Plateau, which India considers a part of Ladakh, the place the present faceoff is going on.

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Associated Press Writer Christopher Bodeen contributed to the report from Beijing.

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