In a dramatic development, India and China have reached an agreement on “patrol arrangements” and resolution of military standoff on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the government announced. | Photo: PTI
In a dramatic development, India and China reached an agreement on “patrol arrangements” and a military solution standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) the government announced on Monday (October 21, 2024). The patrolling arrangement agreement extends beyond areas along the LAC where there has already been a withdrawal of military personnel over the past few years and includes the hitherto unresolved areas of Demchok and Depsang, sources told The Hindu, indicating that the India-China the impasse since April 2020 is now expected to be resolved.
While the MEA did not elaborate on the agreement and whether there would be a return to the status quo before 2020 and whether the “buffer zones” created recently would continue to exist for patrolling purposes, Mr. Misri said the two sides were ” reached an agreement on the issues under discussion’
The announcement, made by External Affairs Minister Vikram Misri, came amid a media briefing on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia for the BRICS summit on Tuesday, which he will attend along with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Over the past few weeks, Indian and Chinese diplomatic and military negotiators have been in close contact with each other at various forums and as a result of these discussions, an agreement was reached on patrolling the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border areas, leading to disengagement and resolving the issues that have arisen in these areas in 2020,” Mr Misri told reporters, adding that the two sides would now take “next steps” on the matter.
The timing of the announcement of the India-China agreement, just a day before the BRICS summit, means that a much-rumored meeting between Mr Modi and Mr Xi is now expected to take place on the sidelines. Although the two leaders met as many as 18 times before the Galwan clashes in June 2020, where 20 Indian soldiers were killed, they have spoken only twice since then, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia in 2022 .and the BRICS summit in South Africa in 2023.
Mr Misri did not confirm a meeting between Mr Modi and Mr Xi, but said the government was discussing scheduling a number of bilateral meetings in Kazan, the site of the BRICS summit.
“[BRICS] is a multilateral event, although of course there is always provision for bilateral meetings on the sidelines. We are currently looking at the Prime Minister’s overall program. There are a number of requests for bilateral meetings and we will update you on bilateral relations as they develop as soon as possible,” Mr Misri told reporters when asked, without denying that a meeting with the Chinese leader was among them.
Mr. Misri, who was previously India’s ambassador to China and was undoubtedly a key part of the recent talks, did not elaborate on the agreement between the two sides. He cited recent meetings that led to the breakthrough, which included two meetings between External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in June-July, two meetings of the WMCC mechanism of diplomatic and military officials in July-August, followed by a meeting between NSA Ajit Doval and Mr. Wang, who is also the Special Representative for Border Negotiations, in September. These were followed by intense negotiations between military commanders and MEA officials over the past few weeks. With the confirmation of Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi’s trips to Russia for BRICS, a deadline appears to have appeared for the negotiations to conclude with a result.
Jaishankar for an agreement on disengagement and patrolling along the LAC
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar spoke about the India-China disengagement process at a summit in New Delhi on Monday (October 21, 2024).
Mr Jaishankar said: “We have reached an agreement on patrolling and with that we are back to where the situation was in 2020. With that we can say that the process of disengagement with China is complete.”
The foreign minister added that “there are areas that for various reasons after 2020 they blocked us, so we blocked them… We reached an understanding that will allow patrolling… Depsang, this is not the only place there and other places. The understanding is that we will be able to do the patrolling that we have been doing until 2020.
Mr Jaishankar said: “At various times people almost gave up. We have always maintained that on the one hand we obviously had to do a counter-deployment, but side by side and we have been negotiating, actually since September 2020, since I met with my colleague Wang Yi in Moscow. It has been a very patient process, although more complicated than it should have been… The fact is that if we succeed, as we have now, in reaching an understanding in terms of patrolling, respecting the sanctity of the LAC. What it does is it creates a basis for that peace and tranquility that should be there in the border areas that were there before 2020 and hopefully we can get back to that peace and tranquility. That was our main concern. We have always said that if you disturb the peace and tranquility, how can other areas of bilateral relations be improved?”
(With information from Dinakar Peri)
Published – October 21, 2024, 4:10 PM IST
