Both India and China have agreed to have another round of senior commanders meeting at an appropriate time

Locked in bitter row at the Line of Actual Control, India and China have agreed to have another round of talks. The Ministry of External Affairs has, however, informed, “the core issue remains that both sides remain to strictly follow the various bilateral agreements and protocols in their entirety.’

MEA official spokesperson Anurag Srivastava during a media briefing on Thursday said the two sides continue to maintain communication through diplomatic and military channels with the objective of ensuring complete disengagements in all friction points along the LAC.

Speaking about the ongoing friction between the two sides at the LAC, he said, “both sides have agreed to have another round of senior commanders meeting at an appropriate time.”

“As we have conveyed earlier, the two sides continue to maintain communication through diplomatic and military channels with the objective of ensuring complete disengagements in all friction points along the LAC in the western sector and for the full restoration of peace and tranquillity,” Srivastava said at the media briefing.

India and China are locked in a bitter row at the LAC for the past eight months. Things took an ugly turn when troops from both sides clashed on June 15 in Galwan Valley which resulted in heavy casualty on both sides.

Since then both sides have held several rounds of diplomatic and military-level commander level talks to de-escalate the tensions which translated into ministerial level talks on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting this year.

During the discussions so far, India has made it clear that it will not budge an inch from the LAC until the Chinese side takes a step back.

“The core issue remains that both sides remain to strictly follow the various bilateral agreements and protocols in their entirety including the 1993 and 1996 agreement on maintenance of peace and tranquillity along the LAC in the border areas,” Srivastava said.

The agreements require that there should not be amassing of troops, each side should strictly abide by and respect the LAC and should not take any unilateral action to alter it, he added.

Time and again, India has registered its opposition to the increasing Chinese hostility at the border as the Chinese side plans to instigate India to engage in a military clash which can subsequently alter the status quo at the LAC.

Recently, a report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in its 2020 Annual Report to Congress, said that the Chinese government seems to have planned the incident in Galwan Valley.

It has referred to China’s Defence Minister Wei call to ‘use fighting to promote stability’ at the National People’s Congress in May “potentially indicating China’s intent to initiate military tensions with its neighbors to stabilize its periphery by projecting an image of strength,” it wrote.

The report described the move as one taken to deliberately escalate tensions between the two nations.