Chinese and Indian troops face off in Bhutan border dispute

Articolo tratto da The Guardian

Regional rivalry escalates as forces mobilise near borderland that China claims but India says is in Bhutan

Chinese (left) and Indian soldiers at a border crossing. Analysts say armed conflict is unlikely in the near future. Photograph: Diptendu Dutta/AFP/Getty Images

China has demanded the withdrawal of Indian troops from a scrap of disputed territory to end an escalating border row between the two Asian powers that has drawn in tiny Bhutan.

Beijing claims the Indian troops are occupying its soil, but both Bhutan and India maintain the area in question is Bhutanese territory.

Analysts maintain that armed conflict between the two Asian powers is unlikely, but say the harsh language and scale of the mobilisation in the remote but strategically important area, where the borders of China, India and Bhutan intersect, is unprecedented in recent years.

 

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