Trade through Nathu La reopens amid fresh border row

Nathu La: Bilateral trade between India and China opened on Monday through the fabled Silk Road amid a fresh border row, with Beijing claiming a strip of land in Sikkim.
"Border trade was earlier scheduled to open on May 1 but was postponed after Beijing requested New Delhi to delay the start following landslides in the Tibet Autonomous Region," said Ujwal Gurung, Sikkim's director of industry and commerce.
"Formal trade for the current year began on Monday and would continue until Nov 30," Gurung said.
The reopening of bilateral trade comes at a time when Beijing has once again raked up a border row by claiming a narrow strip of land near village Gyangyong in northern Sikkim.
Chinese officials have apparently objected to stone cairns erected at the village by Indian soldiers.
India has told China it would not allow Chinese troops into the area and that it would mean a breach of the treaty between the neighbours to maintain peace along the border.
The two Asian giants in July 2006 reopened trade across the 15,000-ft Nathu La Pass, 52 km east of Sikkim's capital Gangtok, as part of a broader rapprochement. The move marked the first direct trade link between the nuclear-armed neighbours since a bitter border war in 1962.
Under an agreement reached between the two countries, trade takes place four days a week - Monday to Thursday - beginning May 1 each year and lasting until Nov 30 when snow makes the area impassable.
Although two-way trade was slow in the first two seasons, about 1,200 Chinese traders crossed the border separated by a rusty barbed wire marker to the bazaar of Sherathang, five kilometres below the pass on the Indian side.
About 700 Indian traders headed to the Renqinggang interim market in Tibet on the Chinese side, 16 km from the border.