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New Delhi:
Indian and Chinese soldiers will be able to resume patrolling in the way they had been doing before the border face-off began in May 2020, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said today at the NDTV World Summit.
Earlier today, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced India and China have arrived on a patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Himalayas, and it can lead to disengagement and resolution of tension.
The breakthrough came ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia to attend the BRICS summit tomorrow.
“We reached an agreement on patrolling, and we have gone back to the 2020 position. With that we can say the disengagement with China has been completed. Details will come out in due course,” Mr Jaishankar told NDTV Editor-in-Chief Sanjay Pugalia.
“There are areas which for various reasons after 2020, they blocked us, we blocked them. We have now reached an understanding which will allow patrolling as we had been doing till 2020,” Mr Jaishankar said.
The External Affairs Minister said the LAC breakthrough is a good development that happened due to “patient and persevering diplomacy”.
READ | India To Resume Patrolling In Ladakh After Big Breakthrough With China
“… At various points of time people almost gave up. We have always maintained on the one hand we obviously had to do counter deployment, and we have been negotiating since September 2020. It has been a very patient process, though more complicated than how it should have been,” Mr Jaishankar told NDTV.
“The important thing is if we have reached an understanding, I think what it does is it creates a basis for peace and tranquillity along the border, which were there before 2020. That was a major concern. If there is no peace and tranquillity, how can other areas of bilateral ties improve?” Mr Jaishankar said.
While he agreed people may speculate on the LAC development, the External Affairs Minister said he would use “caution” in responding on whether this positive development would spread to trade ties.
“It (LAC breakthrough) has just happened. I would not go so fast at the moment,” Mr Jaishankar said, referring to trade.
The last meeting of the working mechanism for consultation and coordination on India-China border affairs was held on August 29 in Beijing. The two sides then had a frank, constructive and forward-looking exchange of views on the situation along the LAC to narrow down differences and find early resolution of outstanding issues.
It was agreed that restoration of peace and tranquillity, and respect for the LAC are the essential basis for restoration of normalcy in bilateral relations.
Earlier this month, Indian Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi had said the two sides have resolved the “low-hanging fruits” and now need to address difficult situations, adding there was “positive signalling” from the diplomatic side and execution on the ground was dependent on military commanders of the two countries.
Indian and Chinese military commanders too had been meeting regularly seeking complete disengagement in the remaining areas along the LAC in eastern Ladakh as an essential basis for restoration of peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas.
Some areas still remained to be de-escalated after Indian and Chinese troops withdrew from Gogra-Hot Springs in Ladakh in September 2022. The Chinese forces in this area had returned to pre-2020 positions. Even then, Chinese soldiers were still believed to hold large swathes of Indian territory to the north in the Depsang plains.
Fierce clashes between soldiers of both sides took place in eastern Ladakh’s Galwan in June 2020, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed in action. Over 40 Chinese soldiers were killed or injured.
