[Assam] India no security concern and want to continue occupation of Zanang claiming as your Arunachal? Be concerned of your so-called main land. Leave Assam and her contagious historical regions to fend for themselves INDEPENDENTLY as in the yester years.

[Bartta Bistar]

*India in a fix as China plans road to Everest*
20 Jun, 2007 l 0009 hrs ISTlSaibal Dasgupta/TIMES NEWS NETWORK

http://www.samachar.com/showurl.php?rurl=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_in_a_fix_as_China_plans_road_to_Everest/rssarticleshow/2134972.cms&news=India%20in%20a%20fix%20as%20China%20plans%20road%20to%20Everest&pubDate=Wed+Jun+20+12%3A11%3A23+IST+2007&keyword=toi_home









  BEIJING: In an obvious attempt to stun the world at the time of the
Olympics, China announced on Tuesday that it was building a metalled road to
the Mount Everest base camp, raising howls of protests from environment
activists and generating muted security anxieties in New Delhi.

The construction of the 108-km road to a height of 5,200 metres will begin
within a week - and like most Chinese execution of grand projects, will be
completed in four months. The plan is to transport the Olympic torch to this
point, from where Chinese runners (or mountaineers) will carry it to the
world's tallest peak.

Environment activists are appalled at China, not for its gumption but
because a blacktop road will mean more people, more burning of fuel, more
construction and more refuse in an area whose ecosystem is fragile and
already threatened.

They cite the havoc wrought in other glacial areas where roads have been
built, mostly pilgrim spots like Badrinath and Gangotri.

Neither the green concerns nor India's anxiety is expected to deter the
Chinese. The fact that construction will begin in a week indicates that
advanced preparations like landscape surveys and geological investigations
have already been carried out in the mountainous region in Tibet.

The audicious project is bound to be an engineering feat as was the
Beijing-Lhasa railway project, the highest railway in the world. The road
will link Tingri County of Xigaze Prefecture in Tibet, lying at the foot of
the mountain to the base camp. It entails building a "blacktop highway
fenced by undulating guardrails", costing $19.7 million, on roughly where a
jeepable path exists.

The road plan also suggests that Chinese authorities may have discussed the
project with Nepal, which shares Mount Qomolangma, as Mt Everest is called
in Tibetan, with China. But it's not known if India, too, has been told.
Only a day earlier, defence minister A K Antony had spoken with concern
about China rapidly building infrastructure on its side of the border, and
which was making India to step up infrstructure projects on its side.

Official sources in New Delhi said the road per se did not spell any fresh
security concerns for India, although it would be foolish to miss the
symbolic worth of the grand project for the Chinese. Mt Everest, they said,
was held in veneration in Tibet, and the road coming soon after the railway
project, was meant to rub in Chinese president Hu Jintao's Tibet policy that
is designed to hasten the plateau's integration with the mainland.

Announcing the project, the Chinese official *Xinhua News Agency *, hoped
the new highway would become a major route for tourists and mountaineers.
There are signs that the planning for the road was carried out in some
secrecy and even the Organising Committee of the Beijing Olympic Games
(BOCOG) did not know about it until recently.
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