External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday said Indian and Chinese troops will be able to conduct patrolling as before the military standoff between the two sides began in May 2020. He said this after an agreement was reached between the two sides to resolve the border dispute in Eastern Ladakh.
Soon after the Foreign Secretary announced the agreement on patrolling along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, Jaishankar said the process of withdrawal of troops with China has been completed.
The breakthrough in resolving the more than four-year-long military standoff in eastern Ladakh comes ahead of a possible bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan this week.
“We have reached an agreement on patrolling and with this we are back to the 2020 situation and we can say…with this the disengagement process with China is complete,” Jaishankar said at the NDTV summit. “
“I think it’s a good development; it’s a positive development and I would say it’s the result of a lot of patience and very determined diplomacy,” Tree said. Relations between the two Asian giants had significantly deteriorated after the deadly Galwan Valley clash in June 2020, the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades.
The two sides have been separated over several friction points following a series of military and diplomatic talks over the past few years. However, the talks hit obstacles on the way forward to resolve the situation in Depsang and Demchok. The External Affairs Minister said that peace and harmony on the border is important for the overall relations between the two countries.
He said, “We have always said that if you disturb peace and harmony, how will other relations progress?” In response to a question, Jaishankar indicated that India will be able to patrol in Depsang and other areas. “So what has happened is that we have reached an agreement that will allow the patrolling that you talked about in Depsang, it’s not the only place,” he said.
“There are other locations as well. As per my knowledge, the agreement is that we will be able to do the patrolling that we were doing in 2020 (before the standoff),” he said. The External Affairs Minister said that both sides have been in talks since September 2020 to end the deadlock. “On one hand we obviously had to make counter-deployments, but at the same time we are negotiating.
“We have been in talks since September 2020, when I met my Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow,” he said. “This has been a very patient process,” Jaishankar said, adding, “It was perhaps more complex than it could have been and should have been.” Jaishankar said there was peace and harmony along the LAC before 2020 and “hopefully we will be able to get back to that situation”.
“This was our major concern because we have always said that if you disturb peace and harmony, how can you expect the rest of the relationship to move forward,” he said. On the difficult negotiations, Jaishankar said, “At times, people had almost given up, you could say.”
