SHORTLY after sources in the Indian Army confirmed that the disengagement process began Tuesday in the Depsang Plains and Demchok, China, too, affirmed this saying that “Chinese and Indian frontier troops are engaged in relevant work, which is going smoothly at the moment”.
The Army’s confirmation came Friday, four days after India announced that an agreement on patrolling had been reached between the two sides.
“In accordance with the resolutions that China and India reached recently on issues concerning the border area, the Chinese and Indian frontier troops are engaged in relevant work, which is going smoothly at the moment," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a media briefing in Beijing Friday.
The Chinese Embassy spokesperson in New Delhi posted the comments on X on Saturday.
Army sources had said that the process is likely to be completed by October 28-29 but flagged that there could be no strict timeline given the terrain and the weather conditions in these areas.
In Pune, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, speaking at Flame University, lauded the Indian military deployed at the India-China border under “very very unimaginable conditions”.
Stating that there were different aspects of this solution, he said that the “pressing one is disengagement because troops are very, very close to each other and the possibility of something happening existed. Then there is de-escalation because of troop build-up on both sides”, he added.
"Then there is a larger issue of how you manage the border and negotiate the boundary settlement. Right now everything that's going is concerning the first part which is disengagement," he said.
He said India and China came to an understanding at some places after 2020 on how troops return to their bases but a significant segment was related to patrolling.
"There was blocking of patrolling and that is what we had been trying to negotiate for the last two years. So what happened on October 21 was that in those particular areas of Depsang and Demchok, we reached an understanding that patrolling would resume how it used to be before," Jaishankar added.
Jaishankar said it is still a bit early for normalisation of relations which will "naturally take time to rebuild a degree of trust and willingness to work together”.
He said that when Prime Minister Narendra Modi met President Xi Jinping at Kazan in Russia for the BRICS summit, it was decided that the foreign ministers and National Security Advisors of the two countries would meet and see how to move forward.
He also said that over the last decade, India has improved its infrastructure on the border. Part of the problem is that in the earlier years, the border infrastructure was really neglected, he added.
Explained
A note of caution
China’s affirmation underlines the commitment to the process post the Modi-Xi bilateral at Kazan. However, by flagging the current breakthrough as being focused on only the “first part”, Jaishankar has underlined the long haul.
"Today we have put in five times more resources annually than there used to be a decade ago which is showing results and enabling the military to actually be effectively deployed. The combination of these (factors) has led to where it is," he said.
Locked in a military standoff along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh following Chinese incursions over four-and-a-half years ago, India and China have taken the first step to repair bilateral ties by starting the process of disengaging troops at two of the seven friction points in the region to restore patrolling rights of each there.
Currently, the two sides are removing temporary structures built over the past four-and-a-half years, sources said. Among the temporary structures being dismantled are prefabricated sheds and tents being used to house equipment, vehicles and troops.
The current agreement, sources underlined, is only on restoring patrolling rights in the Depsang Plains and Demchok areas and disengagement is taking place at only these two friction points — the problems there are called legacy issues and predate the 2020 Chinese incursions.
The Chinese PLA had cut off Indian access to patrolling points (PPs) 10 to 13 in the Depsang Plains. In the Demchok area, Chinese troops had been squatting at the Charding Nullah.
This agreement is important because the Chinese side, until a year ago, showed reluctance to even discuss Depsang Plains and Demchok while it agreed on disengagement at other friction points — PP 14 (Galwan valley), PP 15 (Hot Springs), PP 17A (Gogra), north and south banks of Pangong Tso.
Comments