LHASA, China: China has confirmed that it had moved troops along its disputed border with India but said there had been no fighting.

Yan Xianxu, foreign affairs director of the Tibet region, said Chinese military movements were ‘partly a response to Indian air and ground intrusions into disputed territory between Tibet and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

He said there had also been Indian over fights of disputed land in the western Himalayas.

“The Indian troops came across (the disputed part of the border) and we issued them a warning and asked them to go back”, he said.

“Our troops did not fight no bullets. There was only crossing the line, warning and maybe some quarreling”.

The Sino Indian border was the scene of a brief war in 1962 and has become increasingly tense in the last two months, with each side accusing the other of massing troops there.

Western travelers returning to Lhasa from trekking in east Tibet said they saw dozens of military trucks heading in both directions of Testing.

A Foreign Affairs Ministry official said Tsedang, 90 miles from Lhasa on an east west road running north of the border, was closed to foreign travelers as it was “not tranquil, due to the difficulties with the Indians”.

One traveler, 27 year old lawyer Nicholas Howen from Sydney, Australia, said he saw an ambulance bus carrying wounded Chinese soldiers going toward Lhasa and away from the direction of the disputed area on May 9.

Howen said: “I was hitching on a dirt road at Gyatse, (75 miles) east of Tsedang, when the bus went past as fast as it could.

“For about five seconds, I saw inside about 40 people, three quarters of them in (People’s Liberation Army) uniforms, some of them with bloodstained bandages on their heads”.

 

Yan said Howen must have been mistaken because there had been no actual clashes only incidents not involving fighting since the start of the year.

Yan’s comments were the first official ones corroborating reports of increased military activity since a spate of rumors swept the Tibetan capital about hostilities.

The Finnish newspaper Helsingen Sanomat reported May 14 that Chinese and Indian troops had clashed on the border.

The Foreign Ministry in Peking has dismissed the Finnish report as “sheer fabrication”. The Indian ‘Defense Minister said on May 18 that there has been no armed border clashes.

One senior member of Lhasa’s small foreign community who declined to be identified, said he believed arms and ammunition had been flown to Lhasa from Chengdu, capital of neighboring Sichuan province, on alternate days earlier this month when Lhasa airport was officially closed for runaway repairs.

From Lhasa, these arms would be sent first by truck and then if necessary by porters and mules to the area of worst tension on the eastern Sino Indian frontier.

Lhasa always has a strong PLA presence but foreigners have remarked on increased military truck movements, mainly heading south, in the last two months, as well as unusual night aircraft movements.

Four military helicopters seldom seen around Lhasa according to foreigners living here were parked at the airport.

Indian aircraft had overflown this same territory as well as around Aksai Chin, a disputed area linking Tibet by road with China’s westernmost region of Xinjiang, he said.

Article extracted from this publication >>  May 29, 1987