In a bilateral meeting, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar tried to reiterate India’s position with his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang on Thursday. The meeting has helped in the normalisation of bilateral ties linked to resolving outstanding issues on the LAC (Line of Actual Control).

India to talk on issues of LAC

According to the officials, the two leaders met for almost an hour at a resort in this seaside village, ahead of a meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on Friday. People familiar with the matter said Jaishankar used the meeting to push India’s stance for the early resolution of the military standoff in the Ladakh sector of the LAC, which has entered its fourth year.

There was no official readout on the meeting from the Indian and Chinese sides, and Jaishankar summed up the discussions in a brief tweet. This was the second meeting this year between Jaishankar and Qin, who last met when the Chinese minister travelled to India in March to attend a G20 foreign ministers’ meeting.

EAM takes Twitter

Taking to Twitter, the foreign minister wrote, “A detailed discussion with State Councillor and FM Qin Gang of China on our bilateral relationship. The focus remains on resolving outstanding issues and ensuring peace and tranquillity in the border areas.”

He said they had also discussed SCO, G20 and Brics (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa).

Moreover, Mr Jaishankar also held a bilateral meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, during which they reviewed various aspects of cooperation between India and Russia.

The Indian side recently rejected China’s persistent efforts to push a narrative that the situation in the Ladakh sector is stable and moving towards “normalised management”. One of the people cited above said this was largely the position taken by India at Thursday’s meeting.

After his last meeting with Qin on March 2, the EAM said that bilateral ties are “abnormal” and the two sides need to address “real problems”. More recently, Jaishankar has described the situation on the LAC as “very fragile” since there are points where Indian and Chinese troop deployments are “quite dangerous”.

This was in marked contrast to the position taken by Chinese leaders such as defence minister Gen Li Shangfu, who visited India last month for an SCO meeting and told his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh that the border is “generally stable” and the two countries should “place the border issue in an appropriate position” and “promote the transition of the border situation to normalised management”. The standoff on the LAC and a brutal clash at Galwan Valley in June 2020 that killed 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese troops have taken bilateral relations to their lowest point in six decades.

Former ambassador Rajiv Bhatia, distinguished fellow for foreign policy studies at Gateway House, said: “It was good the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers had a meeting, but frankly there was no forward movement. None was expected and, therefore, this is no surprise.”

Bhatia said the meeting was on expected lines and needs to be seen in the context of recent articles by Chinese scholars, who have written the positions of the two sides are far apart. “The bottom line is that the Chinese side has been saying the border issue should be placed in its appropriate place in bilateral relations, which suggests India is over-hyping the matter, whereas, for India, this is the central issue,” he said.

(With Inputs)