External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar on Tuesday said that the India-China ties have improved and that India remains “committed to engaging with China through bilateral discussions to arrive at a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable framework for a boundary settlement.”
Briefing the Lok Sabha on India-China ties as well as the disengagement at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, Jaishankar said that the bilateral relations between India and China have been “abnormal” since the 2020 Galwan Valley clash when “peace, tranquillity in border areas were disturbed due to Chinese actions”.
Jaishankar said, “The immediate priority was to ensure disengagement from friction points so that there would be no further untoward incidents or clashes. This has been fully achieved. The next priority will be to consider de-escalation, that would address the massing of troops along the LAC with associated accompaniments.”
“Recent developments that reflect continuous diplomatic engagements have set Indo-China ties in direction of some improvement,” Jaishankar said, adding that military and diplomatic level talks between India and China had successfully resolved recent border issues.
“The House is well aware of the circumstances leading up to the violent clashes in Galwan Valley in June 2020. In the months thereafter, we were addressing a situation that had not only seen fatalities for the first time in 45 years, but also a turn of events serious enough for heavy weaponry to be deployed in close proximity to the LAC. While a determined counter deployment of adequate capability was the Government’s immediate response, there was also the imperative of a diplomatic effort to defuse these heightened tensions and restore peace and tranquility,” he said.
Jaishankar said that India was and will remain very clear that the three key principles must be observed in all circumstances:
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