Geneva/New Delhi, Sep 12 (UNI) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said that India and China have made “some progress” in resolving outstanding issues related to their border talks, and “roughly 75 per cent of the disengagement problems are sorted out”.
Speaking at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy think tank, the EAM said that both sides have been engaged in negotiations for the last four years to resolve the boundary issue.
“Now those negotiations are going on. We made some progress. I would say roughly, you can say about 75 per cent of the disengagement problems are sorted out,” he said.
“We still have some things to do,” the EAM said.
However, he added that the militarisation of the border is a bigger issue they have to contend with.
“How does one deal with it? I think we have to deal with it. In the meanwhile, after the clash, it has affected the entirety of the relationship because you cannot have violence at the border and then say the rest of the relationship is insulated from it,” he said.
“We hope that if there is a solution to the disengagement and there is a return to peace and tranquility, then we can look at other possibilities,” he added.
He also said the Galwan Valley clashes of June 2020 affected the “entirety” of the bilateral ties “because you cannot have violence at the border and then say the rest of the relationship is insulated from it”.
“The basis obviously for a good relationship, I would say even for a normal relationship, was that there would be peace and tranquility in the border. After things started to take a better turn in 1988, we had a series of agreements which stabilised the border,” he said.
“We have now been negotiating close to four years and the first step of that is what we called disengagement which is their troops go back to their normal operating bases and our troops go back to their normal operating bases and where required we have an arrangement about patrolling because both of us patrol regularly in that border, as I said it is not a legally delineated border.“
In Berlin on Tuesday, the EAM said that India is not “closed to business from China”, but the issue is in what sectors does India do business with China and on what terms.
“We are not closed to business from China…I think the issue is, which sectors do you do business and what terms do you do business? It’s far more complicated than a black and white binary answer,” he said in Berlin.
