India and China on Sunday held another round of top-level military talks in a bid to defuse the three-year-long troop confrontation in eastern Ladakh, ahead of Chinese defence minister general Li Shangfu’s visit to Delhi for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting this week.
There was no official word on the outcome of the 18th round of the corps commander-level talks, which began around 9.30 am and ended late in the night at the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point in eastern Ladakh. The talks were held after a gap of over four months, with no breakthrough being recorded in the 17th round on December 20 last year.
Sources said the Indian side on Sunday, led by 14 Corps commander Lt-General Rashim Bali, strongly pressed for troop disengagement at the strategically-located Depsang Bulge area and the Charding Ninglung Nallah (CNN) track junction at Demchok with the Chinese delegation headed by the South Xinjiang Military District chief.
Let’s see if there is any forward movement due to the Chinese defence minister’s visit here on April 27-28. At the military talks, it was made clear India wants disengagement, de-escalation and de-induction of the over 50,000 troops each forward deployed by both sides with heavy weaponry like tank, artillery and rocket systems in eastern Ladakh,” a source said.
“It was stressed this is a prerequisite if China wants any improvement in the overall bilateral relations. Otherwise, this `no war, no peace’ situation will continue with the bilateral relations remaining in a limbo,” he added.
China has so far shown no intent to withdraw its forces and stop blocking Indian patrols from accessing their traditional patrolling points (PPs), which fall well inside India’s perception of the Line of Actual Control
In Depsang, a table-top plateau located at an altitude of 16,000-feet, for instance, Indian troops have not be able to access PPs-10, 11, 12, 12A and 13, because the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) blocks their movement around 18-km inside what India considers its own territory.
Moreover, with the no-patrol buffer zones varying from 3-km to 10-km coming up largely on Indian territory after disengagement in areas like Pangong Tso-Kailash range, Galwan Valley and Gogra-Hot Springs, Indian troops can no longer access 26 of their 65 PPs from the Karakoram Pass in the north down to Chumar in the south in eastern Ladakh.
China, apart from relentlessly strengthening its military positions and infrastructure all along the 3,488-km long LAC since April-May 2020, has taken to aggressive tactics in the eastern theatre as well.
This led to the clash between the rival troops at Yangtse in the crucial Tawang sector on December 9. Further hardening its stance earlier this month, China also “standardized” the names of 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh, which was summarily rejected by India.
Just last week, while addressing the military brass, defence minister
said the armed forces should be prepared for any contingency along the northern borders, though “disengagement and de-escalation” was the “best way forward” through the ongoing diplomatic and military talks.
