India in tune with Pak-China nexus: Army chief

Army chief Gen Bikram Singh said on Wednesday that India was fully geared towards building a credible nuclear deterrence against the deepening China-Pakistan nexus, soon after India successfully tested the advanced 4,000-km range Agni IV ballistic missile a day earlier.

Gen Singh said the Army is aware of China's growing footprint in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the Gilgit-Baltistan areas, and the force has strongly stressed the need to firmly hold the "strategic positions" in the Siachen Glacier-Saltoro Ridge region.

"As per our inputs, Chinese soldiers are there to provide protection to their ongoing infrastructure work like road, railway and hydro-electric projects,'' he said. The Army has also conveyed its "concerns" to the government on the presence of Chinese soldiers in PoK, he added.

"I am assuring the nation as the Army chief that 1962 (when China invaded India) will not be repeated ... no way.  We have plans in place on all borders to safeguard our country's territorial integrity,'' Gen Singh told newspersons in New Delhi.

Speaking a month before the 50th anniversary of China's military offensives in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh in 1962, the Chief of Army Staff stressed that India was bolstering its military capabilities in tune with its national security objectives. "They are not specific to any country or geared against anybody," he said.

Gen Singh was however clear about the "strategic importance" of the Siachen-Saltoro Ridge, the virtually uninhabitable but strategically important high-altitude area where 850 Indian soldiers have been killed since 1984.