There seems to be a possibility of India-China relations getting back on track after they deteriorated following the violent clashes in Ladakh.
Every effort is being made from India’s side.
On the border issue in eastern Ladakh, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Thursday that the problems related to the withdrawal of troops have been resolved to about 75 per cent but the bigger issue is the increasing militarization on the border.
He said this in a dialogue session with the think tank ‘Geneva Centre for Security Policy’ in Switzerland.
Jaishankar said that the violent clashes in Galwan Valley in June 2020 impacted India-China relations in a holistic manner.
He said that no one can say that after the violence on the border, the rest of the relations are untouched by it. The Foreign Minister said that talks are going on between the two sides to find a solution to the problem.
He said, “Talks are going on. We have made some progress. You can roughly say that about 75 percent of the problems related to the withdrawal of troops have been resolved.
We still have to do some things.” He said, but the bigger issue is that both of us have brought our armies closer to each other and in this sense the border is getting militarized.
The Foreign Minister said, “How to deal with this? I think we have to deal with it. After the clash, it has affected the entire relationship because after the violence on the border you cannot say that the rest of the relationship is untouched by it.”
He said, “We hope that if some solution is found to the issue of withdrawal of troops and peace is restored, then we can consider other possibilities.”
A standoff between Indian and Chinese troops continues at some friction points in eastern Ladakh even as the two sides have completed withdrawal of troops from several areas following extensive diplomatic and military talks.
India has consistently maintained that unless there is peace in the border areas, its relations with China cannot be normal.
Terming India-China relations as “complex”, Jaishankar said in the late 1980s, relations between the two countries were normal and the basis for this was that there was peace on the border.
He said, “Obviously the basis of good relations, even normal relations, is that there should be peace and harmony on the border. When the situation started improving in 1988, we made many agreements, which brought stability on the border.”
“What happened in 2020 was a violation of several agreements for reasons that are still not entirely clear to us; we can speculate on this,” the foreign minister said.
He said, “China actually deployed a very large number of troops on the Line of Actual Control on the border and naturally we also sent our troops in response. This was very difficult for us because we were in the phase of COVID lockdown at that time. ” Jaishankar described the developments as very dangerous.
Referring to the Galwan Valley clashes, he said, “We could see straight away that this was a very dangerous development as the presence of a large number of troops in high altitude and in extreme cold could lead to accidents. And this is exactly what happened in June 2022.”
The External Affairs Minister said the issue for India was why China disturbed the peace and sent those troops and how to deal with the situation.
He said, “We have been talking for about four years and the first step is what we called disengagement of troops, whereby their troops go back to their normal operating bases and our troops go back to their normal operating centers and we have patrolling arrangements where necessary because we both patrol that border regularly.
As I said, this is not a legally delineated boundary.”
Jaishankar arrived here on the last leg of his three-day visit. He also visited Saudi Arabia and Germany.
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