Army trucks move towards LAC eastern Ladakh.
Credit: PTI File Photo
New Delhi: Beijing “will work” with New Delhi to implement “solution to the relevant issues” related to the border between the two nations, as was agreed upon recently, China said a day after India stated that the process of disengagement of troops along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh was “completed”.
“In recent times, China and India have maintained close communication on issues related to the China-India border through diplomatic and military channels,” Lin Jian, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese government, told journalists in Beijing.
He was replying to a question on the new deal India clinched with China on the patrolling arrangement along the LAC. “At present, the two sides have reached a solution to the relevant issues, which China has positively evaluated. In the next step, China will work with India to implement the above solution,” he said, without sharing any details of the agreement.
India on Monday announced an agreement with China on the patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced the latest India-China deal. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar later said that the two nations had gone back to “where the situation was in 2020” and the process of disengagement of troops had been completed.
“We can say that the disengagement process with China has been completed. There are areas, which for various reasons after 2020, because they had blocked us, so we had blocked them. What has happened now is we have reached an understanding which will allow the patrolling,” Jaishankar said on Monday.
The breakthrough in the protracted negotiations between the two sides set the stage for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first formal bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping since the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army got engaged in a stand-off along the de facto boundary between the two nations in eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020.
The deal on the patrolling arrangement along the LAC was announced just a day before Modi’s departure to Kazan in Russia for the 16th BRICS summit, which would conclude on Thursday. He is likely to have a bilateral meeting with Xi on the sideline of the summit.