http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1529667,0008.htm
In a significant announcement, China's top envoy has declared that his country is ready to help India to crush its nagging Maoist insurgency that it once actively supported.
Chinese Ambassador Sun Yuxi said at an interaction here that Beijing did not even know why the Maoist guerrillas in India called themselves followers of the man who led the communists to victory in China in 1949.
"If there is any help (you expect) from us to India to get rid of them, we will try to do our best," the top diplomat said candidly.
"We are also wondering why they call themselves Maoists. We don't like that. We don't like that at home. We don't have any connection with them at home.
"If they call themselves Maoists, we can't stop that way. But definitely it (the Maoist movement in India) does not have any connection with the government of China."
While China has been distancing itself from Maoist guerrillas in India for years, it is the first time a top Chinese official has gone to the extent of saying that Beijing would have no hesitation in providing help to crush the Maoist rebels.
The ambassador said it was possible some of the Maoist guerrillas might possess Chinese weapons. But even that, he said, did not mean that they had any links with Beijing.
He explained that China had supplied a lot of weapons to the anti-Soviet mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan during the 1980s in cooperation with Pakistan and the US.
"A lot of them (were) lost in the black market and they spread everywhere. Even some Chinese terrorists were trained in Afghanistan. They went back with the Chinese weapons and they waged terrorist activities inside China.
"So, we were very sorry to see that... If there is anything that we can help to stop them (Indian Maoists), we would do."
The Maoist movement in India erupted in May 1967 in a West Bengal village called Naxalbari, giving its adherents the sobriquet Naxalites. China then actively supported the movement, and Indian Maoists vowed to pursue China's revolutionary path.
China began distancing itself from the Indian Maoists in the 1980s and now has no institutional linkages with any of the Maoist groups, including the dominant Communist Party of India-Maoist.
In a significant announcement, China's top envoy has declared that his country is ready to help India to crush its nagging Maoist insurgency that it once actively supported.
Chinese Ambassador Sun Yuxi said at an interaction here that Beijing did not even know why the Maoist guerrillas in India called themselves followers of the man who led the communists to victory in China in 1949.
"If there is any help (you expect) from us to India to get rid of them, we will try to do our best," the top diplomat said candidly.
"We are also wondering why they call themselves Maoists. We don't like that. We don't like that at home. We don't have any connection with them at home.
"If they call themselves Maoists, we can't stop that way. But definitely it (the Maoist movement in India) does not have any connection with the government of China."
While China has been distancing itself from Maoist guerrillas in India for years, it is the first time a top Chinese official has gone to the extent of saying that Beijing would have no hesitation in providing help to crush the Maoist rebels.
The ambassador said it was possible some of the Maoist guerrillas might possess Chinese weapons. But even that, he said, did not mean that they had any links with Beijing.
He explained that China had supplied a lot of weapons to the anti-Soviet mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan during the 1980s in cooperation with Pakistan and the US.
"A lot of them (were) lost in the black market and they spread everywhere. Even some Chinese terrorists were trained in Afghanistan. They went back with the Chinese weapons and they waged terrorist activities inside China.
"So, we were very sorry to see that... If there is anything that we can help to stop them (Indian Maoists), we would do."
The Maoist movement in India erupted in May 1967 in a West Bengal village called Naxalbari, giving its adherents the sobriquet Naxalites. China then actively supported the movement, and Indian Maoists vowed to pursue China's revolutionary path.
China began distancing itself from the Indian Maoists in the 1980s and now has no institutional linkages with any of the Maoist groups, including the dominant Communist Party of India-Maoist.
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