Eastern Ladakh standoff: India, China to hold Lt. General-level talks on June 6

Top military officers from India and China are set to meet at eastern Ladakh on Saturday morning to resolve the month-long face-off between the troops from either side and restore peace.

To be led by Lt Gen Harinder Singh, GOC of Leh-based 14 Corps from the Indian side, the Corps Commander level meeting between the two of the world’s largest military would happen on the Chinese side of the disputed border at Chushul-Moldo border point.

The Chinese delegation would be led by Maj Gen Liu Lin, commander, South Xinjiang Military region.

The talks would start around 9.30 am and finish by noon. It would be followed by a lunch hosted by China’s People’s Liberation Army, sources said.

Hours before the meeting, Naveen Srivastava, Joint Secretary (East Asia) and Wu Jianghao, Director General in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a meeting through video conference in which they reviewed current developments, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.

Recalling the consensus reached by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jumping to have a peaceful, stable and balanced relations between India and China, the two diplomats reached a consensus that the two sides should handle their differences through peaceful discussion bearing in mind the importance of respecting each other's sensitivities, concerns and aspirations and not allow them to become disputes.

On the discussion table, the task cut out for Lt Gen Singh would be restoration of status quo ante so that Indian troops can go patrolling up to Finger-8 point on the northern bank of the Pangong lake where they used to go. For years the finger areas and the 135 km long lake remained a major flash point between the two border guarding troops.

According to the Indian perception of the Line of Actual Control, the disputed border runs through Finger 8 (the spurs or mountain ridges are named as fingers) because of which Indian troops could go up to that point for patrolling. The PLA has now stopped the Indian troops at Finger 4, though which the Chinese perception of the LAC runs. The area between Finger 4 and Finger 8 is the confrontation zone.

Lt Gen Singh and his colleagues would assert that Indian troops were neither the first to block any patrol activity nor started the troop build-up. Only when the PLA strengthened their numbers, Indian Army brought a battalion as reinforcement from the DBO brigade close to the LAC.

The discussions between the military leaders would not include the stand-off at the Galwan valley, which never really was a contested area. At Galwan, the troops from either side are on the respective side of the LAC.

The Chinese muscle flexing at Galwan valley is probably a pressure tactic to delay the construction of a 7.5 km feeder road to the Darchuk-Shyok-DBO road. Even at the Hot Spring area, the situation is under control after a few rounds of discussions.