Warily, India and China to reopen Silk Route tradeBy Simon Denyer
Fri Jun 9, 8:18 AM ETNATHU-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 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 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."
