China has offered “five different explanations” for the deployment of thousands of soldiers in the Royal Line of Control (LAC) that pushed bilateral relations to their most difficult phase, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said on Wednesday.
Ties between India and China have been “very significantly damaged” by Beijing’s violation of the agreements on the maintenance of peace and tranquility in LAC, and the extensive contacts at different levels between the two parties so far have not addressed the basic question that “agreements are not being fulfilled”. observed, ”he said in an online conversation with the Australian think tank Lowy Institute.
With the India-China border clash in its eighth month, Jaishankar said: “Today we are probably in the most difficult phase of our relationship with China, certainly in the last 30 to 40 years … or even longer.”
Noting that the 20 Indian soldiers killed in the clash in the Galwan Valley on June 15 were the first military casualties in LAC since 1975, Jaishankar said the relationship has been “badly damaged” due to all the positive developments in recent years. 30 years, including China. becoming India’s second largest trading partner and commitments in tourism and travel were based on the fact that the two sides had agreed to maintain peace and quiet in the border areas while trying to resolve the boundary issue .
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Pointing to the multiple agreements signed since 1993 that committed both parties not to bring large forces to LAC, he said: “Now, for some reason, why the Chinese have given us five different explanations to date, the Chinese have violated it.
“The Chinese have literally brought tens of thousands of soldiers in full military readiness mode directly to LAC in Ladakh. Naturally, the relationship would be deeply disturbed by this. ”
Jaishankar did not go into the details of the five explanations offered by the Chinese side. While there have been discussions and clashes between troops in the past, there has never been a major lack of understanding, he said. With soldiers from the two sides very close to each other this year, “it was not at all surprising that something went terribly wrong,” he said in a reference to the confrontation in the Galwan Valley that resulted in 20 Indian casualties and “changed to I complete the national sentiment. ” .
Getting the relationship back on track is now a “very important issue,” although communications between the two parties are not a problem, Jaishankar said. He spoke personally by phone with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and met him on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Moscow, while there were also meetings and contacts between defense ministers, military commanders and diplomats. .
“Communication is not the problem, the problem is that we have agreements and those agreements are not being fulfilled,” he added.
Jaishankar said that China, since 2008-09, has become a “much more nationalistic” country, and this is expressed “later in a variety of forms and policies.” All this was happening at a time when the global order is witnessing the creation of a new architecture and new norms and regimes due to rebalancing and multipolarity, he added.
Responding to a question about India’s relations with the United States under President-elect Joe Biden, Jaishankar said that the former vice president had made a “great contribution” to bilateral relations while he was on the Senate foreign relations committee and his ” goodwill towards India is very manifest. ” .
Deep convergences in many areas have brought India and the US closer together since the time of former President Bill Clinton’s administration, and Washington now realizes New Delhi’s more prominent role in a multipolar world as it needs more partners and goes beyond the traditional alliance system. , he said.
Jaishankar welcomed the rapid expansion of ties between India and Australia in the past 18 months and said that the two “cricket-playing Commonwealth democracies” can help shape the emerging global order. The two countries are expanding an existing trilateral with Japan and seeking to shape new ones with Indonesia and France, he said.
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