New Delhi: India and China on Thursday agreed to work with "urgency" and "redouble" their efforts to achieve complete disengagement in the remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh as NSA Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks in the Russian city of St Petersburg with a focus on finding an early resolution to the dragging border standoff.
In the meeting, Doval conveyed to Wang that peace and tranquillity in border areas and respect for the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are essential for the return of normalcy in bilateral ties, according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
The Doval-Wang meeting took place in the Russian city on the sidelines of a conclave of national security advisors of the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) nations. The MEA said the meeting between Doval and Wang provided an opportunity to review the recent efforts towards finding an early resolution of the outstanding issues.
"The meeting gave the two sides an opportunity to review the recent efforts towards finding an early resolution of the remaining issues along the Line of Actual Control, which will create conditions to stabilise and rebuild bilateral relations," the MEA said.
"Both sides agreed to work with urgency and redouble their efforts to realize complete disengagement in the remaining areas," it said in a statement. "The NSA conveyed that peace and tranquillity in border areas and respect for LAC are essential for normalcy in bilateral relations," the MEA said.
"Both sides must fully abide by relevant bilateral agreements, protocols, and understandings reached in the past by the two governments," it said. The MEA said the two sides agreed that the India-China bilateral relationship is significant not just for the two countries but also for the region and the world.
"The two sides also exchanged views on the global and regional situation," it said. The Doval-Wang meeting came two weeks after India and China held diplomatic talks during which they agreed to intensify contacts through diplomatic and military channels to find a resolution to the outstanding issues.
Hours before the talks between Doval and Wang, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said in Geneva that roughly 75 per cent of the "disengagement problems" with China are sorted out but the bigger issue has been the increasing militarisation of the frontier.
In an interactive session at a think tank in this Swiss city, Jaishankar said the Galwan Valley clashes of June 2020 affected the "entirety" of India-China ties, asserting that one cannot have violence at the border and then say the rest of the relationship is insulated from it.
The external affairs minister said both sides have been engaged in negotiations for the last four years to find a solution to the outstanding issues. "Now those negotiations are going on. We made some progress. I would say roughly you can say about 75 per cent of the disengagement problems are sorted out," he said at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
"We still have some things to do," Jaishankar, who is on a two-day visit to Switzerland said. But there is a bigger issue that both of us have brought forces close up and in that sense, there is a militarisation of the border, he said. The Indian and Chinese militaries have been locked in a standoff since May 2020 and a full resolution of the border row has not yet been achieved though the two sides have disengaged from a number of friction points.
The ties between the two countries nosedived significantly following the fierce clash in the Galwan Valley in June 2020 that marked the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades. India has been maintaining that its ties with China cannot be normal unless there is peace in the border areas.
The two sides have so far held 21 rounds of Corps Commander-level talks to resolve the standoff.
