NEW DELHI, India: As Pakistan and China term the economic corridor as a strategic game changer in the region, India says the $46 billion project is “unacceptable” to it.
In a press conference in New Delhi on Sunday, the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told that during his recent three-day official visit to China, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised “very strongly” the issue of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and told the Chinese leadership that that it is “unacceptable”.
“Prime minster during his visit took up the issue very firmly and spoke very strongly that the CPEC going through PoK (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) is unacceptable,” Sushma Swaraj said according to Zee News.
The Indian minister said that the government summoned the Chinese envoy over the CPEC that is to run through Pakistani Kashmir. She said that the Indian envoy in Beijing also raised the issue.
The $46 billion project was signed when the Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a two-day official visit to Pakistan on April 20-21.
Under the project, Pakistan’s southern port city of Gwadar will be connected with China’s northwestern autonomous region of Xinjiang, via a network of highways, railways and pipelines to transport oil and gas.
Last week, Pakistan’s Foreign Office said that they are aware of Indian alleged plans to sabotage the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor but the two friendly countries are committed to execute the project.
“I wish to reiterate our commitment to the realization of Pak-China Economic Corridor projects, which will benefit the entire region,” the Foreign Office Spokesman Qazi Khalilullah said at his weekly news briefing in Islamabad on May 28.
