New Delhi, December 20, 1994. According UPI, "The Indian government strongly denied Tuesday a news report stating that China and India have agreed to begin a joint maneuver along their disputed Himalayan border. 'We have not reached the stage to sign such an agreement', defense spokesman P.S. Bhatnagar told United Press International. An international wire service (not UPI) had reported that the world's two most populous countries had agreed to begin joint maneuvers in the Buddhist Ladakh region next summer. 'Joint working groups of the two countries have been meeting from time to time, and the relations are cordial', Bhatnagar said. 'But no such agreement has been arrived at so far'. The Asian giants reached an accord to slash troop levels during an official visit to Beijing by Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in September last year. Beijing and New Delhi also have agreed to clearly define the present line of control to prevent border clashes. They pledged to abjure the use of force to change existi

ng border positions. The Sino-India territorial dispute and military rivalry are rooted in the 1951 Chinese annexation of Tibet, the world's highest plateau, which removed a buffer between the two ancient civilizations. In 1962, Chinese troops swept across the Himalayas into India, seizing parts of the Buddhist Ladakh region of Kashmir. A year later, Pakistan ceded a slice of its own Kashmiri territory to its close strategically, China. The Sino-Indian border, one of the longest in the world, has been quiet in recent years. However, hundreds of thousands of rival troops remain deployed in the mountainous region. Relations between the two neighbors, however, have improved perceptibly since Chinese Premier Li Peng visited New Delhi in December 1991 followed by Rao's visit to Beijing in September 1993". (EuroTibet News N·9)