New Delhi: Belying expectations of a breakthrough in the fifth round of corps commander level talks between Lieutenant-General Harender Singh, commander of the Leh-based 14 Corps, and Major-General Lin Liu, commander of the PLA’s South Xinjiang Military district, on Sunday (August 2), the Pangong Tso site again stood up like a big wall blocking any further progress in the parleys.
Almost negating any progress in the talks, a source told ETV Bharat on condition of anonymity: “Concerns are there and they still have to be addressed. As of now, the main obstacle is on the northern bank of the Pangong lake. While it is likely that the PLA may move back further from the Finger 5 area, it still maintains a post on the Finger 4 ridgeline which it is refusing to vacate.”
On Tuesday, the China Study Group (CSG) headed by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, deliberated on the issue after getting feedback from the Sunday meeting at Moldo, just across the Indian border post of Chushul in eastern Ladakh.
Sunday’s meeting was the fifth one after June 6, June 22, June 30 and July 14 at Chushul-Moldo.
Scheduling the fifth round of talk was in itself a challenge of sorts with both sides sticking rigidly to their respective positions and disagreement on the agenda. It was a late Saturday evening telephone call from the PLA that scheduled the meeting for Sunday.
Like all India-China border meetings, Sunday’s meeting also went on for more than 11 hours.
While there has been ‘some disengagement’ with Indian Army and PLA soldiers retreating to positions where they were out of visual sight of each other at the flashpoints in Galwan Valley (PP 14), Hot Springs (PP 15) and Gogra (PP 17), and only partially at Pangong Tso, where the PLA had moved back to Finger 5 from Finger 4, it is from the dominating Finger 4 ridgeline that the PLA has refused to budge from.
Fingers 1 to Finger 8 are finger-like spurs that jut out in a north-south direction from the mountains southwards to the Pangong Lake. While India claims the LAC runs near Finger 8, China claims territory till Finger 3. In the past, while the PLA patrolled from Finger 8 to 4, Indian Army patrolled from Finger 4 to 8.
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