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In their first such meeting since India’s parliamentary poll, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council meeting on July 4th. Both sides stressed the importance of “mutual respect” in resolving the boundary issues that have frozen ties between them for the past four years.
Today’s News :
Mr. Jaishankar told Mr. Wang that it was important that the “Line of Actual Control must be respected and peace and tranquillity in the border areas always ensured”, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) after the meeting, which lasted about an hour, and was held just before the start of the SCO Summit.
“The two Ministers agreed that the prolongation of the current situation in the border areas is not in the interest of either side. EAM highlighted the need to redouble efforts to achieve complete disengagement from the remaining areas in Eastern Ladakh and restore border peace and tranquillity in order to remove obstacles towards return of normalcy in bilateral relations,” the MEA said.
The meeting between the two Foreign Ministers came even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to skip the SCO Summit, reversing an earlier decision to attend. The summit would have brought the PM face to face with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time since their meeting in South Africa on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in 2023, which also did not lead to any breakthrough in relations.
The two Ministers were meeting for the third time in the past 12 months, and have made a push for complete disengagement and the resolution of the military border standoff since April 2020. However, talks between border commanders and defence officials in the meetings of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) have thus far yielded no further breakthrough, which hinges on the Chinese position at the Demchok and Depsang sectors.
In a separate readout of the meeting, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was important to find the “correct way”.
What is SCO Summit ?
The 2024 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, being held in Astana, Kazakhstan from July 3-4, is set to address a range of significant issues impacting its member states and the broader region. Enhancing Regional Security and Stability. One of the primary focuses of the SCO Summit is regional security.