Amid reports that it was building a dam in Tibet on Brahmaputra river, China on Thursday assured India that it will not do anything to damage other nations' interests.
"China is a responsible country and will not do anything to damage the interests of others," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a bi-weekly press briefing when asked to comment on reports that China was building a dam on Yarlung Zangbu River or Brahmaputra.
Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao had said yesterday that India had repeatedly raised with China the issue of construction of a dam by it on Brahmaputra river and Beijing had consistently denied any such engagement.
"What I want to say is that this matter has been taken up not just once but on a number of occasions with China and China has consistently denied that it is engaged in any such construction activity on the Brahmaputra," Rao said in New Delhi.
She was replying to a question on the reported construction at the Zangmu site on the Chinese side of the Brahmaputra river, which was confirmed by the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) as per media reports.
The issue had also figured in the meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of the ASEAN-India and East Asia Summit in Thailand last month.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's recent meeting with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh was "just like a gentle breeze" which helped clear up the "suspicion and misunderstanding" clouding bilateral ties, the state-run media here said, seeking to reach out to India after breathing fire over Arunachal Pradesh.
In its first positive assessment of the October 24 meeting between Singh and Wen on the margins of the ASEAN Summit in Thailand amid the Chinese protests over Arunachal Pradesh, an editorial in the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling CPC, said the two Prime Ministers reached consensus that the two neighbours should forge a strategic partnership.
"The consensus between Premier Wen and Indian PM Singh is just like a gentle breeze, clearing up all the suspicion and misunderstanding that have hindered bilateral relations over the past decades," it said, two days after China blamed the Dalai Lama for the recent tension in Sino-India ties.
The paper noted that during their meeting, Wen and Singh agreed that the two countries should forge a strategic partnership to maintain regional peace and stability, achieve the goal of common development and harmonious prosperity.
While pointing out that Sino-India relations are steadily on the rise despite the ups and downs over the past decades, the editorial underlined that leaders from both countries reached agreement that China and India would "never regard each other as a threat," which served as a political foundation for development of bilateral ties from strategic perspective. PTI
