LEH: The Indian army on Thursday confirmed that there would be more military and diplomatic-level meetings between India and China to ensure complete disengagement to draw curtains on the standoff once and for all in the near future.
It was the officially acknowledged outcome of the talks held at Commander-level that began on Tuesday morning and concluded in the early hours of Wednesday.
An official statement released by the Army on Thursday while referring to the commander-level meetings in Chushul on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control — the fourth such round of talks between the Corps Commanders of India and China of their respective regions facing each other, said: “The Senior Commanders reviewed the progress on the implementation of the first phase of disengagement and discussed further steps to ensure complete disengagement.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying, on Wednesday, had said: “The Chinese and the Indian border troops held the fourth round of commander-level talks on July 14. Building on the common understanding reached at the previous three rounds of commander-level talks and corresponding implementation work, the two sides achieved progress in further disengagement between the border troops as well as easing the situation at the western sector of the China-India boundary.”
We hoped that India would work with China to implement our consensus with concrete actions and jointly safeguard peace and tranquillity in the border areas, Chunying added.
This meeting was a sequel to the July 5 deliberations between the special representatives. This meeting on the border question, in which the two sides had agreed to go in for complete disengagement at the LAC, “The two sides remain committed to the objective of complete disengagement. This process is intricate and requires constant verification. They are taking it forward through regular meetings at a diplomatic and military level,” the officials said.
There is a standoff between the Indian and Chinese troops at the LAC since the first week of May.
“The engagement was consistent with the consensus reached between the Special Representatives of India and China earlier, on July 5 to discuss complete disengagement,” officials said on the Sino-India military talks.