India’s foreign minister said on Thursday that China and India must find a solution to avoid a future battle in the western Himalayas because he fears the militarised, contentious border might spark hostilities between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
In the last three years, following a battle in which 20 Indian soldiers and 4 Chinese soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand combat without firing a shot, both forces have strengthened sites and deployed massive numbers of troops and equipment.
Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told reporters in New Delhi, “The two of us have to find a way of disengaging because I don’t believe this current impasse serves China’s interest either.”
“The relationship is harmed and will continue to be impacted, that is a reality. If there is any hope that we would somehow return to normality when the border situation is out of the ordinary, such hope is unfounded, he added. Although several rounds of military and diplomatic negotiations have managed to reduce hostilities between the two rival armies, Jaishankar has previously termed the environment as unstable and risky.
Jaishankar said that both governments maintained contact and that several military and diplomatic channels of communication were in existence.
“These mechanisms continue to do the work because, at the end of the day, disengagement is a very detailed process… all of this would continue to happen,” he claimed.
According to Jaishankar, New Delhi had already informed Beijing that “we are seeing movement of your forces which, in our view, is violative of our understanding” before the May 2020 border incident.
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The 3,800 km (2,360 miles) of shared border between India and China is largely poorly marked, and the two countries engaged in a brief but terrible war over it in 1962.
After many border accords since the 1990s, relations improved, and China is now India’s second-largest commercial partner.
India, however, is a part of the so-called Quad Strategic Security Group, which also includes the United States, Japan, and Australia. In order to counteract China’s expanding economic and military influence in the Asia-Pacific region, the Quad was established in 2007.
