From the Archives (April 23, 1971): ‘China trying to encircle India’

The Soviet Union to-day [Moscow, April 22] accused China of meddling in the affairs of India, Burma, Pakistan and Ceylon and of seeking to encircle India by Peking’s camp-followers. In the most outspoken attack yet of China’s latest diplomatic overtures to the west, the Soviet Union also renewed the charge that Peking was dreaming of triggering off an armed clash between the two big powers - the Soviet Union and the United States. In defining Peking’s aims in the Third World, it made allusions to the current developments in Pakistan and Ceylon in which Moscow had suspected Peking’s hand but had so far refrained from stating it openly. Moscow’s charges came out in a long article in the influential Soviet political weekly ‘New Times’ credited to L. Kirichenko. The Russian version of the weekly was not due to go on stalls until Friday but it was a measure of official importance given to the article that Tass released advanced excerpts of it this morning. The operative passage quoted by Tass said that in the Third World, numerous facts showed that Maoists continued to “meddle in the affairs of India and Burma, Pakistan and Ceylon, the Arab States and several countries of Africa. One of their tasks is to encircle India by States which would follow in the wake of Peking’s policy. Their other task is not to allow the hotbed of war in West Asia to be liquidated. The third task is to get a foothold in some countries of Africa through the construction of roads and enterprises there, supply of weapons and despatch of Chinese specialists.”