S Jaishankar spoke about the India-China relationship at a virtual event organized by the Asia Society
New Delhi:
The violent clashes on the India-China border in June had a profound public and political impact and left the relationship “deeply disturbed,” Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said on Friday.
Tensions had escalated between India and China after clashes in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh on June 15 in which 20 members of the Indian army were killed in action. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army also suffered an unknown number of casualties.
Mr. Jaishankar, speaking at a virtual event organized by the Asia Society, said that India has built the relationship with China over the past 30 years “and a foundation for building that relationship has been peace and quiet. along the Line of Royal Control. “
He said that there are multiple agreements, starting in 1993, that created the framework for that peace and tranquility, which limited the military forces that reached the border areas, how to handle the border, how the border troops behave when they approach.
“So, from the conceptual level to the behavioral level, there was a kind of complete framework. Now, what we saw this year was a deviation from this whole series of agreements. The concentration of a lot of Chinese forces on the border was clearly contrary to all this.
“And when there was a sticking point that was a lot of troops at different points very close to each other, then something tragic happened like what happened on June 15,” he said.
“To underline the enormity of that, it was the first military casualty that we had after 1975. So what it has done is, obviously, it has had a very deep public impact, a very important political impact and it has left the relationship deeply disturbed.” . S Jaishankar said.
Jaishankar said that apart from the Wuhan Summit in April 2018, there was a similar summit in Chennai last year and the idea of the summit was for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping to spend time, speak directly about their concerns. .
“What happened this year, of course, was a very sharp deviation. Now it is not just a drastic deviation from the conversation, it is an abrupt deviation in the course of a relationship of more than 30 years,” he said.
In response to a question about what the Chinese actually did at the border and why they did it, S Jaishankar said: “Frankly, I have not received any reasonable explanation that you can tell me on this matter.
“Today there are a lot of troops with weapons concentrated in that segment of the border and obviously that is a very critical security challenge that we face.”
At the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) special event, Mr. Jaishankar spoke with ASPI President Kevin Rudd, a former Australian Prime Minister. The two also talked about Jaishankar’s new book ‘The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World’.
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