External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar (file photo)Image source: PTI
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday that the agreement with China on patrolling the Line of Actual Control did not mean the issues between the two countries had been resolved, although the troop withdrawal gave time to consider the next step. There is a chance. He credits the agreement to the military, which played a role in very unimaginable circumstances.
Jaishankar told an event in Pune that patrols will be conducted in Depsang and Demchok as per the troop withdrawal agreement reached on October 21. With this, we can now consider our next steps. Not that everything is solved, but the first phase of withdrawal has arrived and we have successfully reached it.
Replying to a question during an interaction with students, the external affairs minister said it would still take time to normalize relations. He said rebuilding trust and working together will naturally take time.
He said that when Prime Minister Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kazan, Russia to attend the BRICS Summit, it was decided that the foreign ministers and national security advisers of the two countries would meet to discuss how to proceed. Jaishankar said one of the reasons why we are where we are today is that we made a very determined effort to stand up for our views and express our views. The Army is present at the LAC in unimaginable circumstances to protect the country. He has accomplished his mission, and diplomacy has accomplished its mission.
He said India had improved its infrastructure over the past decade. Another problem is that border infrastructure was effectively neglected in the early years. Jaishankar said today we are investing five times more resources every year than we were ten years ago, which is bearing fruit and enabling the military to deploy truly effectively.
A few days ago, India and China reached an agreement to withdraw their troops and patrol the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh, which is a major success in ending the standoff that lasted more than four years. In June 2020, soldiers from the two countries clashed fiercely in the Galwan Valley, and relations were tense. This is the most serious military conflict between the two sides in recent decades.
He said that India has been negotiating with China since September 2020 to find a solution. The foreign minister said the solution had multiple aspects. The bottom line, he said, was that the soldiers had to retreat because they were so close to each other 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. The foreign minister said India and China had agreed in some places on how troops would return to their bases after 2020, but one of the important things related to patrolling.
Jaishankar said patrolling was being disrupted and we have been trying to negotiate on the issue for the past two years. So what happened on October 21 was that in certain areas like Demchok and Depsang, we reached a consensus that patrolling would go back to the way it was before.
