India, China to hold 15th round of Corps Commander level talks on March 11

The talks till now have resulted in the resolution of issues in North and South Bank of Pangong Tso, Galwan and Gogra Hot Spring areas

The military commanders of India and China are likely to meet again this week to continue negotiations to resolve the stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between the two nations in eastern Ladakh.

The senior commanders of the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are likely to meet at the Chushul-Moldo point on the LAC on Friday. This is going to be the 15th round of negotiations between the two sides to resolve the almost two-year-long stand-off, which had started in April-May 2020.

A deal on mutual withdrawal of the front-line troops from Hot Springs is perceived as a “low-hanging fruit” for the negotiators to yield.

New Delhi and Beijing are set to make a fresh attempt to resolve the stand-off even as the United States and the other western nations of late sought to draw a parallel between China’s aggression along its LAC with India and Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine. India, however, rejected the US argument, with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stating that the two situations were not analogous.

Jaishankar’s counterpart and Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, too of late tacitly accused the United States of always trying to stoke tensions between China and India.

India has been facing territorial aggression of China, but still resisted the pressure from the US and the other western nations and refrained from calling out Russia for launching military operations in Ukraine. India repeatedly abstained from voting on US-backed resolutions against Russia at the United Nations Security Council, General Assembly and Human Rights Council as well as at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

New Delhi refrained from aligning against Moscow in view of India’s decades-old partnership with Russia, particularly the long history of defence cooperation between the two nations.

India’s relations with China hit a new low over the 22-month-long military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh. The stand-off started in April-May 2020 with the Chinese PLA amassing a large number of troops along the LAC in an apparent move to change the status quo along the disputed boundary between the two nations and push the line westward to encroach into the territory claimed by India.

The Indian Army also deployed additional troops to counter the Chinese Army’s move. Though protracted negotiations between the two sides resulted in mutual withdrawal of troops from both banks of Pangong Tso (lake) and the Gogra Post last year, the stand-off could not be resolved in other places along the LAC.

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