India and China on Friday agreed to hold yet another meeting between the senior military commanders of the two sides to resolve the stalemate in the process of mutual withdrawal of troops from the scenes of the face-offs along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
The senior diplomats of India and China had yet another round of video conference on Friday, amid concerns in New Delhi over the Indian Army’s reports that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had not yet withdrawn troops from several face-off points, including the northern bank of the Pangong Tso lake.
India is also worried as China has not yet shown signs of thinning out the troops it deployed over the past few weeks in the “depth areas” on its side of the LAC – the de facto border between the two nations.
New Delhi on Friday conveyed to Beijing that the Chinese PLA should not only speed up pulling back front-line soldiers from the face-off points on the LAC, but should also withdraw the large number of troops deployed in the “depth areas”.
The video conference was the 17th meeting the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC), which was instituted in 2013.
Naveen Srivastava, who heads the East Asia division at the MEA led the delegation of the Government of India in the video conference. The delegation of the Chinese Government was led by Hong Liang, the Director-General of the Department of Boundary and Oceanic Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This was the third video conference they had within the framework of the WMCC to resolve the current India-China stand-off in eastern Ladakh. They earlier had two WMCC video conferences on June 24 and July 10.
Srivastava and Hong agreed that it was necessary for both sides to sincerely implement the understandings reached between senior military commanders in the meetings they had held till date.
The two sides agreed that another meeting of the senior military commanders might be held soon so as to work out further steps to ensure expeditiously complete disengagement and de-escalation and restoration of peace and tranquillity in the border areas, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a press release issued in New Delhi after the India-China WMCC video-conference on Friday.
Lt Gen Harinder Singh, General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 14 corps of the Indian Army, earlier had four marathon meetings with his counterpart Maj Gen Liu Lin of the Chinese PLA at Chushul-Moldo point on the LAC on June 6, June 22, June 30 and July 14.
The diplomats of the two sides agreed that “early and complete disengagement of the troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and de-escalation from India-China border areas in accordance with bilateral agreement and protocols and full restoration of peace and tranquillity was essential for the smooth overall development of bilateral relations”, the MEA added in its press-release.
The “disengagement” of troops along the LAC means withdrawal of the front-line soldiers by both sides from the scenes of the face-offs caused by the Chinese PLA’s transgression into the territory of India – ostensibly to unilaterally alter the status quo along the disputed boundary. The de-escalation in the border areas however will require the withdrawal of a large number of soldiers the Chinese PLA amassed on its side of the LAC, as well as the “mirror deployment” by the Indian Army in response to the build-up by the other side.