Word: sikkim
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Shortly after last week's cease-fire went into effect, Communist China accused India of still another act of "aggression" at Natu Pass, high in the Himalayas above Sikkim. The Chinese charged that a group of Indian soldiers had occupied "three aggressive military works" on the boundary and confronted Chinese frontier guards for 2½ hours. Actually, the soldiers were merely escorting four visiting journalists, among them TIME Correspondent Jerrold Schecter. His report...
Closed Neck. Ever since fighting broke out over Kashmir, China has been verbally encouraging Pakistan and denouncing Indian "aggression." Now Peking switched to grave threats and, for India, it could not have come at a worse time or place. The Indian protectorate of Sikkim is a tiny mountain state ruled by King Palden Thondup Nameyal and his American Queen Hope. It has only 162,000 inhabitants, an area smaller than Yellowstone Park, and a preposterous army of 280 militiamen plus 60 palace guards...
Should China seize Sikkim, it would be in a position to close the narrow neck of land linking India proper to the state of Assam and the North East Frontier Agency, as well as open a route from China to East Pakistan. Well aware of the danger, India has kept two divisions of trained mountain troops based at Kalimpong for just such an eventuality...
...Ayub Khan were plotting the destruction of India. Even so, India's Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri tried to stave off war by belatedly agreeing to a two-year-old Chinese offer to have a Sino-Indian inspection team decide whether the fortifications were in China or Sikkim. No one had much hope the offer would be accepted...
Resuming Arms. At week's end New Delhi was astir with reports of Red Chinese troop movements, not only on the Sikkim border but far to the west in Ladakh as well. In Washington, Indian Ambassador B. K. Nehru strode into Secretary of State Dean Rusk's office to ask for resumption of U.S. arms shipments...