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India, China to re-open Silk Road

"For an initial five-year period the pass, at an altitude of 4,310

meters (14,200 feet), will handle limited border trade between the

tiny northeast Indian state of Sikkim and southern Tibet. It will be

a modest start, but it promises much more."

 

Tuesday, June 6, 2006; Posted: 11:05 p.m. EDT (03:05 GMT)

NATHU-LA, India (Reuters) -- As the rain sweeps across the high

Himalayan pass, a Chinese soldier arrives at the three strands of

barbed wire which separate his country's territory from that of long-

time rival India.

 

But this soldier is no longer brandishing a gun, on this once most

sensitive of borders between the world's two most populous countries.

Instead he takes some video for his family back home and pauses to

shake hands across the rusty fence.

 

Just a few yards away bulldozers on both sides of the frontline are

building not fortifications but a road, to connect India and China

and reopen a historic trade route.

 

New Delhi and Beijing plan to reopen the Nathu-la pass in June after

more than 40 years, a potent symbol of rapprochement between Asian

giants who fought a Himalayan war in 1962.

 

For an initial five-year period the pass, at an altitude of 4,310

meters (14,200 feet), will handle limited border trade between the

tiny northeast Indian state of Sikkim and southern Tibet. It will be

a modest start, but it promises much more.

 

"We are very much looking forward to the opening of the pass," said

B.B. Gooroong, adviser to Sikkim's chief minister. "It is

symbolic ... but we have to break the ice."

 

The Sikkim government's enthusiasm is not entirely matched in New

Delhi, where the establishment still remembers being caught off guard

by China's sudden advance across the Himalayas in 1962.

 

Much of the 3,500-km (2,200-mile) common border remains disputed, and

Indian officials say they are not yet ready to throw open the doors.

 

Nevertheless a gradual process is under way which could eventually

lead to a significant trade route opening up from the Indian port of

Kolkata to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

 

"They will go slowly, and there is still some distance before we get

full-fledged transit trade," said foreign policy analyst C. Raja

Mohan. "But there is potential."

 

A study commissioned by the Sikkim government suggested trade across

Nathu-la could reach $2.8 billion a year by 2015.

 

Today that figure appears a little fanciful. It is hard to imagine

anything larger than a minibus negotiating the narrow road that

snakes for 56 km (35 miles) through the steep forested hills from

Sikkim's capital, Gangtok.

 

A few corrugated iron warehouses have been built to handle customs

and immigration formalities, and a small trade mart erected to

exchange goods at Sherathang, a chilly hamlet eight km (five miles)

below the pass.

 

Nor has the Sikkim government yet won's Delhi's approval for its plan

to build a new, two-lane 22-billion-rupee ($500-million) highway from

Nathu-la to western India, bypassing Gangtok's already congested

streets.

 

But pressure is building from China, as it tries to bring economic

prosperity and extend political control over its vast, remote and

sometimes neglected west. Lhasa lies just 520 km (320 miles) by road

from Nathu-la; Kolkata is a stone's throw away compared to Beijing.

 

The passes between Sikkim and Tibet were once part of the Silk Road,

a network of trails which connected ancient China with India, Western

Asia and Europe.

 

Revived during British rule in India, trade across Nathu-la took off

after independence in 1947 and China's invasion of Tibet in 1950. A

decade later, more than 1,000 mules and horses and 700 people took

the narrow trail every day.

 

India imported raw wool, animal hide, and yak tails for use in

shrines. It sent clothes, petrol, tobacco, soap, Rolex watches and

even disassembled cars, including one for the Dalai Lama, the other

way. Payment came in sacks of Chinese silver dollars.

 

Trade came to an abrupt halt in 1962. Five years later skirmishes at

Nathu-la left scores dead on both sides.

 

As India and China rebuilt relations, two minor trade points were

opened at the western end of the border in the 1990s, but agreement

to open the more significant Nathu-la pass came during then Prime

Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's trip to China in 2003.

 

At the same time China indicated it was ready to drop its claim to

Sikkim, a former Buddhist kingdom which had merged with India in 1975.

 

"That was a very major landmark agreement from the political

perspective," said one Indian official. "Now it is the economic side

which will come into play."

 

Sikkim has few industries, but officials hope the local Dansberg and

Yeti beers, produced at a factory in the south of the state, will

prove popular across the border.

 

Even more exciting could be the prospect of tourist traffic one day

crossing Nathu-la. Officials hope that Sikkim could eventually be the

center of an international Buddhist pilgrimage circuit, from Tibet to

Thailand and India to Nepal.

 

But even in Sikkim, there are concerns. Representatives of the mainly

Buddhist Bhutia and Lepcha minorities are worried that unregulated

development will bring in tens of thousands of outsiders and swamp

their fragile cultures.

 

Truck traffic could bring alcoholism, prostitution and AIDS. Roads

mean pollution, landslides and ecological damage, they say.

 

"Negative effects are bound to come," admits state industry and

commerce minister Ram Bahadur Subba. "But development work has to be

carried out."

 

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be

published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/06/06/india.china.reut/index.htm

l?section=cnn_latest

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