'India must be watchful at North East frontiers'

Shillong, May 29: Director General of Assam Rifles Lt General Paramjit Singh today said, "India needs to resolve its border issues with China without compromising national security and its boundary ". "India's Northeastern region will remain a geo-strategic hotspot, and the country could ill-afford to ignore the developments across the frontiers with China," Lt General Singh told reporters at his farewell press conference here.

Lt General Singh, who would hang up his uniform on May 31, said, China was making steady inroads in Nepal and Myanmar in different spheres. "We will have to be watchful of all those, '' he said, while exuding confidence that India was capable of defending its national pride and interest at any cost.

Asked whether India's 'pro-Junta' Myanmar policy was yielding any result in terms of military cooperation of flushing out North east-based insurgent groups, the DGAR, who had visited Myanmar on several occasions refued to give a direct reply, but said the security forces, and for that matter, the Army, were merely the instruments of the state policy.

" Military is not the only solution, what we need is to sort out the matter at the political and diplomatic levels between two neighbouring countries," Lt Gen Singh observed.

UNI