India and China on Thursday agreed to intensify contacts through diplomatic and military channels to narrow down differences and find early resolution of outstanding issues in their standoff on the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) on India-China border affairs met in Beijing for the 17th time since the start of the face-off on the LAC in May 2020. An official statement issued after the meeting, however, gave no indications of an immediate breakthrough.
The WMCC held its last meetings in New Delhi on July 31 and Beijing on March 28 and those talks followed two meetings between external affairs minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in July. This was also the 31st overall meeting of the WMCC since it was established in 2012.
The statement said that in line with the guidance provided by two foreign ministers after their meetings in Astana and Vientiane in July to “accelerate their discussion” and to build on the WMCC meet held last month, the two sides “had a frank, constructive and forward-looking exchange of views on the situation” along the LAC.
These exchanges focused on narrowing “down the differences and find early resolution of the outstanding issues”, the statement said. “For this, they further agreed for intensified contact through diplomatic and military channels,” it added.
In the meantime, the two sides decided to jointly uphold peace and tranquillity on the ground in border areas in accordance with relevant bilateral agreements, protocols and understandings between the two governments, the statement said.
The two sides “reiterated that restoration of peace and tranquillity, and respect for LAC are the essential basis for restoration of normalcy in bilateral relations”, the statement said.
This was a reiteration of the Indian leadership’s stated position that ties with China cannot be normalised without resolving the standoff on the LAC. On the other hand, China has called for the border issue to be placed in its “appropriate place” in the overall relationship while the two sides take forward ties in other areas such as trade and investment.
Gourangalal Das, joint secretary (East Asia) in the external affairs ministry, led the Indian delegation at Thursday’s talks, while the Chinese side was led by Hong Liang, director general of the boundary and ocean affairs department of China’s foreign ministry. Das also called on the vice minister in the Chinese foreign ministry.
The latest meetings of the WMCC had also ended without any breakthrough in addressing the remaining friction points on the LAC at Demchok and Depsang, where troops from both sides remained deployed in close proximity. Dozens of rounds of diplomatic and military talks have resulted in the two sides withdrawing troops from other friction points, such as the north and south banks of Pangong Lake, Gogra and Hot Spring.
There have been more than 20 rounds of talks between Indian and Chinese corps commanders. After the standoff began in May 2020, the WMCC first met virtually in June the same year, shortly after a brutal clash in Galwan Valley left 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese troops dead.
The first fatalities on the LAC in 45 years took bilateral relations to the lowest ebb since the 1962 border war between India and China. Both sides now have some 60,000 troops each arrayed along the LAC in the Ladakh sector.
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