After two hours of tough negotiations in Moscow last week, India and China came to a five-point understanding to dial down tensions, and agreed that the two sides should "quickly disengage" as the current situation on the border was not in the interests of either country.
The points were spelled out in a joint statement and while the test, so far as India is concerned, lies in Chinese troops pulling back on the ground, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi's comments in Moscow on Friday offer hope of forward movement. "We are ready to take conciliatory steps... The most important thing is to avoid new violations of the obligations on the border. Troops and equipment should be withdrawn from the LAC," Wang said during a press conference.
Jaishankar set bottomline
India's Foreign minister S Jaishankar plainly told his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, during the talks that India would not de-escalate until there was complete and verifiable disengagement at all points on the LAC. The talks, which got a little heated, saw Jaishankar setting out India’s bottomline - the overall India-China relationship will suffer if there is no peace on the border. Second, the "root cause" of the current crisis lay in Chinese forces breaching existing agreements with their build-up in April and May and transgressions that forced India to mirror positions and deployments.
Ahead of meeting, Indian forces took charge of key heights
With India-China discussions distilling into a joint statement, there was expectation that the in-person meeting between Jaishankar and Wang might yield results that could restart the stalled disengagement, which has heightened hostilities and tensions with troops within a few hundred metres of each other at several place on the LAC.
Ahead of the meeting, Indian forces had taken charge of key heights in the Pangong Tso area, giving the Indian side crucial leverage in the discussions that took place in Moscow.
The statement said the two sides shall avoid any action that escalates matters, and abide by all existing agreements and protocol on China-India boundary affairs, besides maintaining peace and tranquility in the border areas. It also noted that once the situation eases, the two sides should expedite work to conclude "new confidence-building measures" to maintain calm along the border.
The political understanding reached in Moscow will now have to be translated on the ground by negotiations between military commanders of both sides who are to work out the nitty-gritty and verification. The discussion on Thursday evening was often heated, described in diplomatic parlance as "frank and constructive". The substance of the outcome was that the two sides hammered out the broad contours of a disengagement process, a result that had eluded the two sides. This would be easier for the Indian side to accomplish than the Chinese, considering that, as seen during the Doklam crisis, the foreign ministry in Beijing and the PLA had differing perceptions. However, given that a joint statement has been arrived at, Wang could be expected to be working on a brief cleared by the top Communist Party leadership.
Meanwhile, the two armies remain in stand-off positions in different areas along the LAC, primarily on the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso. Since late August, when the Indian Army acquired some tactical advantages on the Ladakh heights, the Chinese army has been relentless in trying to dislodge the Indian troops. The joint statement said, “The two sides also agreed to continue to have dialogue and communication through the special representative mechanism on the India-China boundary question.”
Generals to meet soon
India and China will hold their sixth round of top-level military talks within the next few days in a bid to defuse the tinderbox-like operational situation in eastern Ladakh, which has seen casualties and shots being fired for the first time in 45 years. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) may not have made any “aggressive or provocative” moves for the last couple of days but there is a “complete breakdown of trust” between the two armies, with thousands of rival soldiers, tanks and howitzers amassed within shooting distance of each other in the Pangong Tso-Chushul area as well as other stretches of the frontier in Ladakh.
“It remains to be seen if diplomatic consensus translates into ground realities. Talks between military commanders will work only if there are clearcut political directions from the top to PLA to disengage and refrain from its strategy to push the Line of Actual Control (LAC) westwards,” said a senior official.
The military situation along the 3,488-km long LAC from eastern Ladakh to Arunachal was reviewed by defence minister Rajnath Singh in a two-hour meeting with the chief of defence staff and the three Service chiefs on Friday.
The rival corps commanders, 14 Corps commander Lt-General Harinder Singh and South Xinjiang Military District chief Major General Liu Lin, have not met since August 2, though communication channels have been kept open at the brigadier and colonel levels on a daily basis.
“The exact date and modalities for the corps commander level meeting are being finalised. We will have to wait and watch whether PLA is open to troop disengagement from the friction points,” another official said. “PLA, after all, had earlier reneged on its promise to withdraw from ‘Finger-4’ (mountainous spur) on the north bank of Pangong Tso. Restoration of the status quo as it existed in April is nowhere on the horizon,” the official added.
A lot will depend on what directions Chinese President Xi Jinping gives to the top PLA hierarchy, including Western Theatre Command (WTC) chief General Zhao Zongqi, who was also in charge during the 73-day Doklam face-off in 2017, and WTC ground forces commander Lt-General Xu Qiling.
“The PLA’s multiple and coordinated incursions into Indian territory in April-May, the amassing of huge forces along the LAC and the ongoing military confrontation with aggressive behaviour, after all, is all being driven from the top in China,” the official said.
The Indian Army has learnt its lesson by the PLA’s steadfast refusal till now to withdraw eastwards from the 8-km stretch it has occupied and fortified on the north bank of Pangong Tso from ‘Finger-4’ to ‘Finger-8’. The LAC runs north to south at Finger-8.
