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India stressed on Thursday the need for peace and quiet along the border with China after two clashes between Chinese and Indian troops, saying such incidents occurred due to different perceptions of the Current Line of Control (LAC).
Amy’s chief general, MM Naravane, said that Indian troops have always maintained peace and quiet along the border, and that the country’s posture of strength would not be affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Indian and Chinese border troops first clashed in eastern Ladakh near Pangong Lake on May 5, and then in northern Sikkim last Saturday. Several soldiers from both sides were injured in these incidents, marking the first major outbreak throughout LAC since the 73-day Doklam clash in 2017.
“The Indian side remains committed to the goal of maintaining peace and tranquility in the border areas between India and China,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said at a regular news conference via video conference.
He noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping, during their informal summits in Wuhan in 2018 and Mamallapuram in 2019, reaffirmed that both sides will continue efforts to ensure peace and tranquility along the border. “This is essential for the overall development of bilateral relations,” he said.
Both the chief of the Indian army and the spokesman for the foreign affairs ministry pointed to clashes between border troops throughout LAC due to different perceptions of the alignment of the boundaries that are not resolved.
Navarane described the clashes as “temporary and short” and said the two incidents resulted in minor injuries to the troops after “aggressive behavior on both sides.” The two sides also “became disconnected after dialogue and interaction in [the] local level, “he said.
Srivastava said such incidents could have been avoided “if we had a common perception of LAC.” The two parties have established mechanisms to resolve such situations.
The India-China border “has been largely peaceful” as a result of Modi and Xi’s instructions to their armed forces to “seriously implement various confidence-building measures … including the principle of mutual and equal security, and strengthen existing institutional arrangements and information – by sharing mechanisms to prevent incidents in border regions, ”Srivastava said.
Naravane argued that the two clashes were unrelated and had no connection to other global or local activities. “I can confidently say that the development of infrastructure capabilities along our northern borders is underway. Our stance of strength will not suffer due to the Covid pandemic. “
The Border Highway Organization continues its work amid the Covid-19 pandemic to connect remote areas so that civilians in those places are connected and to facilitate faster development, the army chief said.
The clash in Doklam, which was sparked by China’s efforts to build a highway in territory claimed by Bhutan, took relations between India and China to a new level. It also sparked one of the worst military clashes since the 1962 war, and ties returned to a standstill after the first informal summit in Wuhan in 2018.
Since New Delhi’s decision to remove the special status of Jammu and Kashmir last August, China, acting at the behest of its traditional ally Pakistan, has criticized India’s actions in Kashmir several times. China has opposed dividing the state into two union territories. These developments have affected bilateral ties.
HT was the first to report on May 10 on the intensification of border tensions between India and China in Sikkim, where 150 soldiers were involved in a tense confrontation a day earlier. Four Indian and seven Chinese soldiers were wounded in Naku La during the confrontation.
Dozens of soldiers from the two countries clashed in Ladakh on the night of May 5-6, HT reported on May 11. Some soldiers on both sides were wounded in the clash involving about 250 men, and an outbreak occurred. avoided as both armies adhered to protocols to resolve the situation.
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