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India, China have set ties on right track: Jaishankar
THE HINDU

India, China have set ties on right track: Jaishankar

External Affairs Minister makes a statement on the LAC agreement, confirming disengagement is done; Speaker disallows questions

India and China have set ties in the “direction of some improvement”, External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar told Parliament on Tuesday, crediting “continuous diplomatic engagement” and a step-by-step approach with Beijing with achieving disengagement in the border areas, where he said the situation had been “abnormal” since 2020 as a “result of Chinese actions”. In a 20-minute suo motu statement to the Lok Sabha, the EAM recounted steps leading to the agreement announced on October 21, in which the Indian Army and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces agreed to disengage troops at Demchok and Depsang, and proceed towards de-escalating tensions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla refused requests from the Opposition for any questions or clarifications to the statement in Parliament.

“As a result of this recent understanding, arrived at after intensive negotiations, resumption of patrolling to the traditional areas is underway,” Mr. Jaishankar said, adding that patrols had conducted the “verification of disengagement on the ground” as well. 

Mr. Jaishankar said that disengagement from all friction points at the LAC has now been “fully achieved”, and that the next priority would be de-escalation, or the withdrawal of troops from the area, and also the management of border areas. He said the Special Representatives and Foreign Secretaries of the two countries would meet soon to take ties forward.

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He said the government’s stance during negotiations between the two sides, which included 17 meetings of the WMCC (Working Mechanism for Cooperation and Coordination) and 21 rounds of the SHMC (Senior Highest Military Commanders meeting) since 2020, had been “firm and principled”, and were driven by the “unstable” local situation, and the impact of the tensions on the bilateral relationship. The EAM said that the October 21 agreement had followed after two meetings he had held with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in July, and one meeting between National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and Mr. Yi in September. Since the agreement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and the Foreign Ministers had met on the sidelines of various conferences.  

“We have been very clear that the restoration of peace and tranquillity would be the basis for the rest of the relationship to move forward,” Mr. Jaishankar said.

He also said that the focus had been on Demchok and Depsang since September 2022, which were the two remaining points of friction after the governments had achieved disengagement on five other points, including the Pangong Tso Lake and the Hot Springs area.

While he did not refer to “buffer zones” directly, Mr. Jaishankar said that “steps of a temporary and limited nature” had been taken in order to avoid further friction, and would be revisited “as the situation demands”. In the wake of the October 21 agreement, several former military and diplomatic officials have questioned how status quo ante could be restored unless the buffer zones were dismantled.

Mr. Jaishankar claimed the government had ensured India’s national security was upheld, with three key principles during the talks — that both sides should strictly respect and observe the LAC; that neither side should attempt to unilaterally alter the status quo; and that agreements and understandings reached in the past must be fully abided by in their entirety.

In his speech, Mr. Jaishankar reaffirmed the government’s contention, which has been questioned by the Opposition, that Chinese troops had “amassed” along the LAC but not transgressed into territory or posts controlled by India. At various points in the past four years, experts have cited satellite images to hold that Chinese troops had made inroads into the Indian side of the LAC, and an official police paper in 2023 had said that Indian troops had lost access to 26 out of 65 patrolling posts in eastern Ladakh. However, the government has held consistently that no territory has been ceded, and the Prime Minister said in June 2020 that “no one had crossed into Indian territory nor had any Indian border posts been taken”. 

Explaining the events that began in April 2020, leading up to the Galwan clashes in June 2020, Mr. Jaishankar said the “amassing of a large number of troops by China along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh in April/May 2020 resulted in face-offs with our forces at a number of points”. He said it had also led to the “disruption of patrolling activities”, but that the armed forces had been able to counter-deploy troops despite logistical challenges and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“The House is aware that our ties have been abnormal since 2020, when peace and tranquillity in the border areas were disturbed as a result of Chinese actions. Recent developments that reflect our continuous diplomatic engagement since then have set our ties in the direction of some improvement,” Mr. Jaishankar said. 

He recounted the full series of developments at the LAC beginning from the 1962 conflict, where China illegally occupied 38,000 square kilometres of Indian territory in Aksai Chin, leading up to the 1993 agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity, the 1996 Confidence Building Measures, the 2003 Declaration on Principles for our Relations and Comprehensive Cooperation, the 2005 Protocol for Modalities for the Implementation of Confidence Building Measures along the LAC, the establishment of the 2012 WMCC, and the 2013 Border Defence Cooperation Agreement.  

“The purpose of my recalling these agreements is to underline the elaborate nature of our shared efforts to ensure peace and tranquillity. And to emphasise the seriousness of what its unprecedented disruption in 2020 implied for our overall relationship,” the EAM explained, pointing to the fatalities at Galwan Valley, where 20 Indian soldiers were killed in clashes for the first time in 45 years, and the deployment of heavy weaponry in close proximity to the LAC. 


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