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External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said the breakthrough agreement with China on patrolling the LAC does not mean that the issues between the two countries have been resolved, but the disengagement allows us to look at the next step.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. (Reuters file photo)
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said the breakthrough agreement with China on patrolling the LAC does not mean that the issues between the two countries have been resolved, but the disengagement allows us to look at the next step.
He credited the military working in “very, very unimaginable” conditions and deft diplomacy for the breakthrough deal with China.
“The last step (of disengagement) was the agreement on October 21 that patrolling would be done in Depsang and Demchok. This will allow us to now look at the next step. It’s not like everything has been decided, but de-unification, which is the first phase, we have been able to reach that level,” Jaishankar said at an event in Pune.
Responding to a question during a separate interaction with students, Jaishankar said it was still a bit early to normalize relations, which would naturally take time to restore some degree of trust and willingness to work together.
He said when Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kazan, Russia for the BRICS summit, it was decided that the foreign ministers and national security advisers of the two countries would meet and see how to move forward.
“If we’ve gotten as far as we’ve gotten today… One is because of a very determined effort on our part to stand our ground and articulate our position. The military was there (in LAC) in very unimaginable conditions to protect the country and the military did its part and diplomacy did its part,” Jaishankar said.
Over the decade, India has improved its infrastructure, he said, adding that part of the problem is that in earlier years, border infrastructure was really neglected.
“Today, we have invested five times more resources annually than we did a decade ago, which is showing results and allowing the military to actually be effectively deployed.” The combination of these (factors) has made it what it is,” he said.
Earlier this week, India announced it had reached an agreement with China to patrol along the LAC in eastern Ladakh, a major breakthrough in ending the more than four-year military standoff.
Since 2020, the border situation has been very upset, which understandably has negatively affected the overall relationship. From September 2020, India is negotiating with the Chinese to find a solution, he said.
EAM said there are different aspects to this decision.
Disengagement is imperative because the troops are very close together and there was a possibility that something could happen. Then there is de-escalation due to the build-up of troops on both sides, he added.
“There’s a bigger question of how you manage the border and negotiate the border settlement. Right now, everything that’s happening is about the first part, which is unbundling,” he said.
He said India and China have reached an understanding in some places after 2020 on how troops return to their bases, but a significant segment is related to patrolling.
“There was a block on patrolling and that’s what we’ve been trying to negotiate for the last two years. So what happened on October 21 was that in these particular areas of Depsang and Demchok, we reached an understanding that patrolling would resume as it was before,” Jaishankar added.
Following the agreement, the two sides have started disengagement of troops at the two points of friction in Demchok and Depsang plains in eastern Ladakh and this process is likely to be completed by October 28-29.
On the ‘string of pearls’, a chain of civil/sea ports seen as a strategy to encircle India, Jaishankar said the development should be taken seriously and India should be ready to compete.
The term refers to the network of Chinese military and commercial facilities and connections along its maritime lines of communication.
“Unfortunately, when it was happening, people (didn’t see it seriously). Frankly, we pay the price for it. We didn’t respond the way we should have. This was done for ideological reasons. The view of China was very different in the policy circles of the government,” added EAM.
(This story was not edited by News18 staff and was published by a syndicated news agency feed – PTI)
