Amid the protracted border confrontation in the Ladakh sector and the first use of weapons along the Royal Line of Control (LAC) since 1975, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs wrote in response to a question to Parliament that relations India with its neighbors, including China, has not deteriorated recently.
“No”, was the written response of Minister of State for Foreign Affairs V Muraleedharan to a question from Trinamool Congress deputy Sougata Roy in Lok Sabha about whether bilateral relations with neighbors such as Nepal, China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Myanmar had recently deteriorated. .
The government places the highest priority on relations with neighbors and India is an “active political and economic partner of its neighbors and is involved in various projects, including development projects, with these countries,” he said.
In response to another question, also from Trinamool Congress deputy Sougata Roy, on whether China has good relations with any of India’s other neighbors, Muraleedharan said that the country’s relations with other countries “are independent of the relations of those countries. countries with Third World Countries “.
People familiar with the matter said the state minister’s response was in response to a question about a general assessment of India’s relations with all of its neighbors collectively and not about a particular bilateral relationship.
On the specific issue of India-China relations, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh outlined New Delhi’s position in his detailed statement in Parliament on Tuesday, the people said on condition of anonymity.
Singh had said in his statement that the current situation in the border areas with China was very different from past clashes “in terms of the scale of troops involved and the number of sticking points.” He also said that the Chinese side had engaged in provocative military maneuvers and violated agreements by amassing troops.
The position taken by the government in Parliament comes days after the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of September 11 following the meeting of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, S Jaishankar, with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow on the sidelines of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
According to the statement, the Indian side had made it clear to the Chinese that maintaining peace and tranquility in the border areas is “essential for the development of ties”, and that the recent incidents in eastern Ladakh had “inevitably affected the development of the bilateral relationship ”.
In a written response to another question in the Lok Sabha on whether India has initiated talks with China regarding the recent tensions at the border, Muraleedharan noted the contacts between the Foreign and Defense ministers, the military commanders and the Special Representatives. of the two parties and the meetings of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (CMMC) on border issues since June.
He noted that Jaishankar and Wang agreed on a five-point roadmap during their meeting in Moscow on September 10, whereby both sides will be guided by the consensus reached by the senior leadership, will work to quickly withdraw troops, will comply with all the boundary agreements and protocols. , continue the dialogue through various mechanisms and accelerate work on new confidence-building measures in border areas.
“Consequently, the two parties are expected to continue to have meetings of military and diplomatic officials to implement the agreements reached between the two foreign ministers and ensure the full restoration of peace and tranquility in the border areas,” Muraleedharan said.
Muraleedharan reiterated India’s position that China’s deployment of troops and weapons in border areas and throughout LAC had been improved since April-May, and that the Chinese side “attempted to violate LAC in various areas of the western sector. “since mid-May.
These attempts received an “appropriate response” from India, and China deviated from the consensus of disengagement reached at a meeting of corps commanders on June 6 and “tried to unilaterally change the status quo,” he said.
This resulted in a “violent confrontation” in the Galwan Valley on June 15, in which both sides “suffered casualties that could have been avoided if the agreement at the senior commander level had been scrupulously followed by the Chinese side,” Muraleedharan said. .
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