NEW DELHI: With over 1,20,000 Chinese soldiers with heavy weapon systems still amassed along the long frontier with India, defence minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday told his Chinese counterpart Admiral Dong Jun that it is now crucial to move forward from the recent troop disengagement in eastern Ladakh to de-escalation to build greater trust and confidence between the two countries.
“We need to focus on cooperation rather than conflict,” Singh said at the delegation-level meeting with the Chinese defence minister on the sidelines of the Asean defence ministers’ meeting-plus in Vientiane.
Describing the 50-minute bilateral meeting as “extremely productive”, defence minister Rajnath Singh said the two sides “agreed to work together towards a roadmap for rebuilding mutual trust and understanding”. “Amicable relations” between India and China, the two most populated nations in the world and major engines of global growth, would have “positive implications” for global peace and prosperity as well as help stabilise the world economy, he said.
The meeting comes after Indian and Chinese troops disengaged at the remaining face-off sites at Depsang and Demchok in eastern Ladakh last month and then resumed “coordinated” patrolling in the two areas.
External affairs minister S Jaishankar had also held talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the margins of G20 summit in Brazil two days ago, where the next steps towards normalising the overall bilateral relations, like resumption of direct flights and the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra as well as data sharing on trans-border rivers, were discussed.
The Depsang-Demchok disengagement, of course, is only the first step towards restoring normalcy along the 3,488-km Line of Actual Control (LAC), stretching from eastern Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh. India wants it to be followed by de-escalation and then de-induction of troops ranged against each other.
Sources told TOI that latest surveillance and intelligence inputs show China continues to deploy around 22 to 23 combined arms brigades (CABs) in forward locations and training areas along the western (Ladakh), middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal) and eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal) sectors of the LAC. Each CAB has around 4,500-5,000 soldiers with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery, and surface-to-air missile systems, among other weapon systems.
Moreover, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) also continues with its “heightened activity” across Yangtse, Asaphila, Longju, and Fish Tail-1 & 2 areas in Arunachal Pradesh, sources said. At the bilateral, Singh reiterated India’s consistent stand throughout the stand-off – which erupted after PLA made multiple intrusions into eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020 – that border issues cannot be separated from the overall bilateral relations.
Singh also called for reflecting on the lessons learnt from the “unfortunate border clashes” at Galwan Valley in June 2020, taking measures to prevent recurrence of such events, and safeguarding peace and tranquillity along the border. Singh emphasised he looked forward to greater trust and confidence-building between the two sides through de-escalation. With the Depsang-Demchok disengagement, there is no longer any eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation in eastern Ladakh, which will prevent any sudden inadvertent vertical escalation on the ground. But there is still a long way to go before the forward deployed rival troops go back to their peacetime locations.
