New Delhi: India on Sunday played down the claim of Chinese Ambassador Sun Yuxi that the whole of Arunachal Pradesh was Chinese territory with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh refusing to comment on the controversy.
''I would better not comment on the issue,'' Singh said when asked what was his reaction to the Chinese envoy's claim just before the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to India.
In an interview to a channel, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said, ''I don't think it (the claim) has vitiated the atmosphere,'' ahead of Hu's visit.
Having made the remark, ''it is for him (envoy) to justify'' his claim, Mukherjee said.
The Minister parried a question on whether it has been quite a task improving India's relations with both the US and China, particularly given the compulsions of the coalition politics within the country.
Asked whether the UPA government had compromised India's security concerns while concluding the Indo-US nuclear deal, he said the unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests was announced by the NDA government in 1998 after the Pokhran blasts.
That moratorium was still valid and no one could predict when would the next test take place as it had been the case in the past as well.
Mukherjee denied suggestions that he was number two in the Manmohan Singh government, but indicated that a proposal to have a Deputy Prime Minister was given up right in the beginning in view of the coalition compulsions.
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