In a massive breakthrough, the government on Monday said that India and China had arrived at an agreement to resume patrolling along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh “leading to disengagement”. The announcement came ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia today for the 16th BRICS Summit where he may hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Over the last several weeks, Indian and Chinese diplomatic and military negotiators have been in close contact with each other in a variety of forums. As a result of the discussions that have taken place over the last several weeks, an agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border area and this is leading to dis-engagement and eventually a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said.
Asked about a potential bilateral meeting between PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Summit in Kazan – scheduled to be held on October 22-23 – the Foreign Secretary said, “We are still working around the time and engagements.”
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar reacted to the development and called it a major breakthrough. “Frictions happen between large countries, but this is a major breakthrough,” he said.
The Indian and Chinese militaries have been locked in an eyeball-to-eyeball stand-off since May 2020; New Delhi wants to restore the situation to pre-2020 status at the LAC.
The current agreement pertains to patrolling in Depsang and Demchok areas. Earlier, the militaries of the two countries had pulled back from four of six friction points in eastern Ladakh including Galwan Valley, the site of a violent clash in June 2020 which was the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades.
Last month, S Jaishankar said that about 75 percent of the disengagement problems at the border with China had been resolved. Both countries also agreed to work with “urgency” and “redouble” efforts to ensure complete disengagement, the government said after National Security Adviser Ajit Doval met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of a meeting of the BRICS high-ranking officials responsible for security matters in St Petersburg in Russia last month.
At that meeting, Doval had conveyed to Wang that peace and tranquillity in border areas and respect for the Line of Actual Control (LAC) were essential for the return of normalcy in bilateral ties, the government said.
The Galwan incident of June 15, 2020, described as a physical clash that did not involve the use of firearms, resulted in India losing 20 soldiers, including a Colonel. Although China has acknowledged only four casualties, it is estimated that as many as 40 PLA personnel died in the clash.
The confrontation was the deadliest since the 1962 war and marked a significant deterioration in China-India ties, leading to profound shifts in the geopolitical and strategic calculus of both nations and with far-reaching implications on bilateral ties, regional stability and global geopolitics.
