The foreign ministries of China and India have agreed in a joint statement that their troops must quickly disengage from a months-long standoff at their long-disputed Himalayan border.
Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, and Indian Foreign Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation foreign ministers’ meeting in Moscow to try and end the dispute, the most serious in decades at the undemarcated border.
“The two Foreign Ministers agreed that the current situation in the border areas is not in the interest of either side. They agreed therefore that the border troops of both sides should continue their dialogue, quickly disengage, maintain proper distance and ease tensions,” the statement said.
Separately, China’s foreign ministry said it would maintain communications with India through diplomatic and military channels and commit to “restoring peace and tranquillity” in the disputed border area.
Elaborating on the Moscow meeting, China said Wang had told Jaishankar that the “imperative is to immediately stop provocations such as firing and other dangerous actions that violate the commitments made by the two sides.”
All personnel and equipment that have trespassed at the border must be moved and frontier troops on both sides “must quickly disengage” in order to de-escalate the situation, he added.
Speaking on the five-point agreement between India and China, Sumit Ganguly, a professor of political science at Indiana University in Bloomington, said they would probably involve withdrawing troops from eyeball-to-eyeball contact with one another.
“They would involve reducing certain kinds of actual deployment of artillery and other weaponry along particular band of territory,” Ganguly told reporters.
He added that “periodic meeting between local commanders are the kinds of confidence building measures that are extremely likely to follow in the wake of the agreement”.
The Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, took a more persuasive tone in an editorial published ahead of the two ministers’ meeting.
“The Chinese side must be fully prepared to take military action when diplomatic engagement fails, and its frontline troops must be able to respond to emergencies, and be ready to fight at any time,” the paper said.
It accused India of holding a grudge over the 1962 conflict, and described the country as in “an unprecedented state of puffing”.
Wang and Jaishanka’s meeting took place after a border clash earlier this week when each accused the other of firing in the air during a confrontation on their border in the western.
It would be the first time in 45 years that shots were fired there, breaking an agreement barring firearm use. Both sides have observed a long-held protocol to avoid using firearms on the sensitive, high altitude frontier running through the western Himalayas, though this agreement has not prevented casualties resulting in relations between both countries steadily deteriorating in recent months.
The soldiers on either side, representing two of the world’s largest armies, come face to face at many points.
The Chinese ministry said the two countries reached a five-point consensus on reducing tension in the area including the need to abide by existing agreements to ensure peace.
