India-China tension: Senior military commanders to meet next week

Easing tension on the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso (lake) is likely to be the priority for the senior military commanders of India and China when they restart talks next week.

Lt. Gen. Harinder Singh, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 14 corps of the Indian Army is likely to hold the sixth round of talks with his counterpart Maj. Gen. Liu Lin of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at Chushul-Moldo point on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto boundary between the two nations in the western sector.

The senior commanders of the Indian Army and Chinese PLA did not hold any meeting since they held the fifth round of talks on August 2. But they are now likely to restart negotiations, as agreed upon by the two sides during the meeting between External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sideline of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Moscow.

Lt. Gen. Singh and Maj. Gen. Liu are likely to focus on defusing tension on the banks of Pangong Tso, where the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA are at present engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball situation, a source in New Delhi said.

Since the Indian Army carried out an operation on the south bank of Pangong Tso on August 29-30 night to pre-empt a move by the Chinese PLA to push the LAC westwards, tension escalated further in the region. The local brigade commanders of both the armies have been regularly holding meetings over the past few days, including one on Saturday.

They could not make much headway, but the meetings did keep the channels of communication open even as tension ran high with the soldiers of the two nations positioned hardly 200-300 meters away from each other.

While the senior military commanders of the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA are mandated to discuss ways to resolve the stand-off all along the LAC, they are expected to immediately focus on reaching an understanding on pulling back front-line troops on both banks of Pangong Tso, as the situation around the lake is very grave, the source told the DH.

The fate of the talks between Lt Gen Singh and Maj Gen Liu would depend much on the response of the Chinese PLA to the Indian Army’s demand for complete restoration of the status quo ante on the northern bank of Pangong Tso. The Indian Army’s preemptive operation on the south bank of the lake came weeks after the Chinese PLA dug in its heels on its northern bank and declined to withdraw troops to restore the status quo in the area.

The senior military commanders of the two sides did not have any meeting after the fifth on August 2, as the “disengagement process” they agreed upon was stalled after the PLA declined to completely withdraw troops from several face-off scenes along the LAC – like Depsang Y junction, Gogra Post and of course the northern bank of Pangong Tso.