External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar (file photo)
Regarding the disengagement agreement between India and China at the Line of Actual Control, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said it was the result of military and diplomacy. This was possible, he said, because the military defended the country in extremely adverse circumstances. Diplomacy also played a role. The external affairs minister spoke about this agreement between India and China while talking to entrepreneurs in Pune, Maharashtra on Saturday.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said it will naturally take time to re-establish trust and work together between the two countries. He said that Prime Minister Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping during the BRICS leaders’ meeting. It was decided that the foreign ministers and national security advisers of the two countries would meet and hold further talks. He said that this agreement was not reached alone, but was only possible after multiple rounds of negotiations.
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Jaishankar said: “If we have come here today, one of the reasons is that we stuck to our point and made a very determined effort to make our point. India has improved its infrastructure in the last decade. Today, We’re committing five times the resources each year than we were ten years ago, and that’s getting results and enabling the Army to deploy truly effectively.
Recently, India and China reached an agreement to withdraw their troops and patrol near the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh. This is a major breakthrough that breaks the deadlock that has lasted for more than four years. In June 2020, relations became tense after soldiers from the two countries clashed fiercely in the Galwan Valley. This is the most serious military conflict between the two sides in recent decades.
Patrols in Demchok and Depsang will begin as before.
The foreign minister said that India has been negotiating with China since September 2020 to find a solution. There are many facets to the solution, he said. Most importantly, the soldiers had to retreat because the distance was so close that something could happen.
A big question after that, he said, was how to manage the border and how to negotiate a border agreement. What’s happening now is all related to the first phase, which is withdrawal. He said India and China had agreed in some places on how troops would return to base after 2020, but one of the important things had to do with patrolling.
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Jaishankar said: “Patrols were stopped and we have been trying to negotiate on this for the past two years. So what happened on October 21 is that in certain areas like Demchok and Depsang, we came to an understanding that patrolling would be done in the same way as before recover.
