US ‘strongly opposes’ China’s renaming of areas along disputed Indian border
- The response comes days after Beijing says it changed names of mountains, rivers and residential areas in the Indian-administered Arunachal Pradesh state
- New Delhi, a US ally, rejects China’s ‘senseless attempt’ and says Beijing is ‘altering reality’
Washington has criticised Beijing’s list of 30 new names for places along the 1,865-mile (3,000km) disputed Himalayan border between China and India, formally known as the Line of Actual Control, as yet another “unilateral attempt” to reassert its territorial claims.
“The United States strongly opposes any unilateral attempts to advance territorial claims by incursions or encroachments, military or civilian, across the Line of Actual Control,” a US State Department representative said on Tuesday.
After the report was picked up by several Indian news outlets, New Delhi’s foreign affairs ministry rejected Beijing’s “senseless attempt” at “inventing” names and “altering reality”.
01:36
US joins high-altitude military exercise with India near its Himalayan border with China
“If today I change the name of your house, will it become mine? Arunachal Pradesh was, is and will always be a state of India. Changing names does not have an effect,” the Indian external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, said on Monday.
“Our army is deployed at the Line of Actual Control,” he was quoted as saying by India’s news agency ANI.