New Delhi:
New Delhi has once again taken on China on the issue of stapled visas for Kashmiris and said it is time to be hard-nosed in dealing with Beijing.
Speaking on the issue, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said, "It's for China to undo the knot on the stapled visas issue. We have to be hard-nosed in our dealings."
She added that China should be more sensitive to core issues important to India.
China has been giving visas to people of Jammu and Kashmir on loose sheets of paper instead of passports, an action seen by India as questioning its sovereignty.
The matter snowballed into a major controversy in July this year when Beijing wanted to give such a visa to India's Northern Area Commander Lt Gen B S Jaswal.
India responded by suspending high-level defence exchanges for which Lt Gen Jaswal was travelling to Beijing and has repeatedly made it clear that these will remain on "pause" till China reverts to its position on the issue.
When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met Premier Wen Jiabao in Hanoi in October this year, he too asked China it to be sensitive to India's "core issues", even as the two sides agreed to work their way to solutions to the "difficult" problems.