LAC stand-off continues as rumours begin about Narendra Modi-Xi Jinping meeting

With both Modi and Xi likely to attend a summit in Uzbekistan in September, speculation is rife about a possible meeting

Notwithstanding the speculations about a possible bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping—at Samarkand in Uzbekistan next month—India is sending stern messages to the communist-ruled country.

“India has never attacked any country, nor has it ever occupied an inch of foreign land,” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Tuesday in Udaipur, Rajasthan. “But if anyone ever tries to undermine the sovereignty, unity and integrity of our nation, a befitting reply will be given.”

His statement comes at a time when a large number of soldiers of the Indian Army were still deployed along the disputed boundary between India and China in eastern Ladakh.

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Singh’s comment came just a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar once again articulated New Delhi’s position that normalcy in India-China relations could not be restored without completely resolving the two-year-long military stand-off between the two nations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.

“Much of the future of Asia depends on how relations between India and China develop in the foreseeable future,” Jaishankar had said at the launch of the Asia Society Policy Institute on Monday. “For ties to return to a positive trajectory and remain sustainable, they must be based on the three mutuals: mutual sensitivity, mutual respect and mutual interest. Their current status is, of course, well known to all of you. I can only reiterate that the state of the border will determine the state of the relationship.”

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With both Modi and Xi likely to attend the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit at Samarkand in Uzbekistan on September 15 and 16, speculation is rife about the possibility of a meeting between the two leaders.

If Prime Minister Modi holds a bilateral meeting with the Chinese President, it will be the first such engagement between the two after the military stand-off along the LAC started in April-May 2020, and took the relations between the two neighbours to a new low.

The last bilateral engagement between Modi and Xi was at a seaside resort at Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu in October 2019.