Stand-off still on, India says peace on border with China essential for ties to grow

The stand-off between Indian Army and Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in eastern Ladakh continued, as the latter has not yet withdrawn its soldiers, who had transgressed the disputed boundary on the bank of the Pangong Tso lake.

New Delhi on Thursday said that peace along the disputed boundary is “essential” for “further development” of India-China bilateral relations. Anurag Srivastava, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), reiterated that the June 6 meeting between the senior military officials of India and China had seen both sides agreeing that “an early resolution of the situation would be in keeping with the guidance of the leaders”.

He was referring to the strategic “guidance” Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping had agreed to issue to militaries of the two nations when they had held the first “informal summit” at Wuhan in central China in April 2018.

Lt Gen Harinder Singh, General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 14 corps of the Indian Army, led the delegation from India in the meeting with the Chinese PLA officials at Chushul-Moldo point on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) – the de facto boundary between the two nations – on June 6.

The Chinese PLA delegation was led by its commander in charge of the South Xinjiang Military Region, Maj Gen Liu Lin.

The MEA spokesperson on Thursday said that India and China were continuing “the military and diplomatic engagements to peacefully resolve the situation at the earliest as also to ensure peace and tranquility in the border areas”. “This is essential for the further development of Indian-China bilateral relations,” Srivastava told journalists in New Delhi.

He, however, did not elaborate if the Chinese PLA had withdrawn some of its soldiers from some locations along the LAC after the June 6 meeting between the senior military officials of the two nations. His counterpart in Chinese Government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying, had on Wednesday said that China and India had “effective communication” through engagements between diplomats and military officials of the two nations and “reached agreement on properly handling the situation in the west section” of the boundary. She had also said that the two sides were at present taking actions in line with the “agreement to ameliorate the border situation”.

The June 6 meeting between the senior military officials had been preceded by a video-conference between the diplomats in New Delhi and Beijing. It was followed by a meeting between Major General Abhijeet Bapat of Indian Army and his counterpart in the PLA.

Sources said that though the Chinese PLA had thinned out its troops along the LAC in certain points of transgressions, it had not fully withdrawn its soldiers, who had transgressed into the territory of India, particularly on the northern bank of the Pangong Tso lake. The Chinese PLA had also not agreed to demolish the bunker and the moat like structure it built to restrict Indian Army soldiers’ access to an area where they had earlier routinely patrolled.

The Indian Army asked the Chinese PLA to restore the status quo ante that prevailed before the May 5, when the soldiers of the two nations had a scuffle – leading to the build-ups by both sides and escalation of tension.