Rajnath Singh May Meet Chinese Counterpart Ahead Of Military Talks
(This was originally posted On The Times Of India by Rajat Pandit)
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday evening reached Tajikistan on a three-day trip to attend a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), during which he may also meet with his Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe at Dushanbe.
Sources said though a bilateral meeting between the two defence ministers has “not yet been scheduled”, India is not averse to a discussion if China wants it. “A bilateral meeting with China is not ruled out,” said a source.
“Singh, as it is, will stress the need for a peaceful settlement of all issues through dialogue in the region, including in war-ravaged Afghanistan, during his address at the SCO defence ministers’ meet on Wednesday,” he added. On July 14, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had also held an hour-long meeting with his counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of another SCO meet at Dushanbe.
This comes ahead of the 12th round of corps commander-level talks between India and China, which will now be held “within the next few days” after a long gap since the last round on April 9, in another bid to de-escalate the military confrontation in eastern Ladakh since April-May last year.
At the forthcoming military talks, the completion of the stalled troop disengagement at Gogra and Hot Springs is likely to be taken forward, with sources saying it was “a low-hanging fruit” for the two countries.
But any move to resolve either the friction point at Demchok or the blocking of Indian patrols by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the strategically-located Depsang region is unlikely at this stage, said sources.
China has so far shown no intent to de-escalate the overall situation, with the PLA assiduously consolidating its military positions along the frontier as well as upgrading its airbases facing Ladakh, as was earlier reported by TOI.
India has been stressing that troop disengagement from the “remaining friction points”, followed by de-induction and the consequent de-escalation, is critical for improvement in bilateral ties. But China wants the border row to be kept at an “appropriate place”, without it impinging on the overall ties.
Both Singh and Jaishankar had also separately met their Chinese counterparts during an SCO conclave in Moscow in September last year. The two countries had then agreed to refrain from taking any further military actions that could escalate tensions, with the two foreign ministers also agreeing on a five-point diplomatic consensus for disengagement and de-escalation. The meetings had eventually led to troop disengagement on both sides of Pangong Tso, after some false starts, in February this year.
