Leh: After a lull of five months, India and China on Sunday held the Corps Commander Level talks in the eastern Ladakh sector as the two countries seek to deescalate the heightened tensions along the Line of Actual Control.
As the border row enters the fourth year, the focus remained on resolving the remaining issues in eastern Ladakh in the 18th round of military talks, which took place ahead of Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu’s visit to India next week to attend a key meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation being hosted by New Delhi under its presidency of the grouping.
The 18th round of Corps Commander Level talks was held at the Chushul-Moldo meeting point on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, with Fire and Fury Corps Commander Lt Gen Rashim Bali leading the Indian side, while the People’s Liberation Army was represented by an equivalent rank officer from the Chinese side, defence officials informed.
The meeting, which sought to resolve the more than three-year-old military standoff between India and China, is taking place when both sides are engaged in rapid construction activities along the border areas to strengthen their respective positions.
It is learnt that the Indian side insisted on resolving the issues at the remaining friction points of Demchok and Depsang in eastern Ladakh as soon as possible.
“In the meeting, the Indian side strongly raised the issue of the Depsang plains and Demchok, and disengagement by both sides,” officials informed.
In line with a decision taken at the 16th round of military talks, the two sides carried out disengagement from Patrolling Point 15 in the Gogra-Hotsprings area in September last year.
The corps commander-level talks started to resolve the matters between the two sides in the eastern Ladakh area after the Chinese side tried to alter the status quo on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) by aggressive moving forward with heavy weaponry and a large number of troops in 2020 during the initial period of the Covid pandemic.
The two sides have however disengaged, and have moved to new positions to avoid confrontations.
Sunday’s meeting was held after a gap of five months, with the 17th round of the Corps Commander Level talks held in December 2022.
In the talks, the two sides have agreed to stay in close contact and maintain dialogue through military and diplomatic channels and work out a mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues at the earliest.
However, the Chinese side does not seem to be in a hurry to resolve the issues and is not allowing any forward movement to take place on the legacy issues like the Depsang plains.
They have been blocking Indian patrols to move to their patrolling points in that sector for a long time now.
The Chinese Defence Minister is also now scheduled to be in India for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers’ meetings next week in the national capital.
The chances of de-escalation in near future by the two sides don’t seem very bright and the Indian side is continuing to deploy heavily in the area to guard against any Chinese attempts to alter the status quo as they keep trying to do.
Indian troops thwarted one such attempt in December last year in Yangtse when a Chinese contingent was forcefully pushed back to its area after they tried to come to Indian positions on the LAC there.
