'Back to 2020 situation': S Jaishankar explains 'complete' India-China disengagement
S Jaishankar today said that India and China's disengagement process has now been completed.
External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Monday elaborated on India and China's disengagement process saying the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has returned to what it was before May 2020.
India maintains that New Delhi's relations with China will only normalise after the situation at the de-facto border returns to what it was in 2020.
India and China's relations deteriorated due to Beijing's aggressive posture at LAC in April-May 2020. On June 15, 2020, 20 Indian soldiers died in the line of duty thwarting the Chinese offensive in the Galwan Valley of eastern Ladakh. An unspecified number of Chinese soldiers also perished in brutal hand-to-hand combat.
The two countries have had several rounds of diplomatic and military-level talks over the past four years.
S Jaishankar today said that India and China's disengagement process has now been completed.
Also read: India, China reach agreement on border patrolling along LAC: Foreign secretary Misri
He said there were some areas in Ladakh which were blocked by both sides for patrolling after 2020. The two countries have now reached an understanding that allows patrolling.
"What the Foreign Secretary has said is what I can also say, that we reached an agreement on patrolling and with that we have gone back to where the situation was in 2020. We can say that the disengagement process with China has been completed...There are areas which for various reasons after 2020... because they had blocked us so we had blocked them. So what has happened is we have reached an understanding which will allow the patrolling (sic)," news agency ANI quoted him as saying at an NDTV event.
S Jaishankar said the agreement is the product of a very "patient and persevering diplomacy".
"I think the understanding to my knowledge is that we will be able to do the patrolling which we were doing in 2020. I think it's a good development. It's a positive development and I would say it's a product of very patient and very persevering diplomacy. We've been negotiating since September 2020, when I met my counterpart Wang Yi, in Moscow at that time...I think it creates a basis that peace and tranquility, which there should be in the border areas, which there was before 2020, we will be able to come back to that," he added.
Also read: What does the 2020 Galwan clash say about India and China?
What Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said on India-China disengagement?
Foreign secretary Vikram Misri today informed the media that the two countries have reached an agreement on the patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control.
"We have been in discussion with Chinese interlocutors through WMCC as was mentioned earlier and at the military level as well through meetings of the military commanders at various levels. These discussions have in the past resulted in the resolution of standoffs at various locations. You are also aware that there were a few locations where the standoff had not been resolved," he said.
"Now as a result of the discussions that have taken place over the last several weeks, an agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements along the line of actual control in the India-China border areas and this is leading to dis-engagement and eventually a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020," he said.
With inputs from PTI, ANI