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New Delhi: The White House on Monday refused to acknowledge a news report that the US gave critical real-time intelligence to the Indian military last year, allowing it to successfully resist Chinese “incursions” in the Himalayas, news agency PTI reported.
John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for Strategic Communications at the White House, said, “No, I can’t confirm that” when questioned about the news report during a daily news conference on Monday.
According to PTI, in an exclusive report, the US News said that India was able to repel a Chinese military incursion into border territory in the high Himalayas late last year due to unprecedented intelligence-sharing with the US military, an act that caught China’s People’s Liberation Army off-guard, enraged Beijing; and appears to have forced the Chinese Communist Party to reconsider its approach to land grabs along its borders.
On December 9, 2022, Indian and Chinese troops clashed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh which resulted in “minor injuries to a few personnel from both sides”.
“The US government for the first time provided real-time details to its Indian counterparts of the Chinese positions and force strength in advance of a PLA incursion,” the report said citing a source familiar with a previously unreported US intelligence review of the encounter into the Arunachal Pradesh region.
“The information included actionable satellite imagery and was more detailed and delivered more quickly than anything the US had previously shared with the Indian military,” the report said, according to PTI.
The report further stated that the subsequent clash involving hundreds of troops wielding spiked clubs and Tasers did not result in any deaths as previous encounters have, rather it was limited to a dozen or so injuries and – most conspicuously – a Chinese retreat.
“They were waiting. And that’s because the US had given India everything to be fully prepared for this. It demonstrates a test case of the success of how the two militaries are now cooperating and sharing intelligence,” an unnamed source was quoted as saying by the daily, according to PTI.
The relations between India and China worsened significantly following the fierce clash in the Galwan Valley in June 2020, which marked the first fatal confrontation between the two sides since 1975. At least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers died in the clash.
(With PTI inputs)
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