PM Modi, Chinese President Xi to have bilateral on Wednesday in Kazan, days after LAC agreement

Kazan/New Delhi, Oct 23 (Representative) Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping are to have a bilateral meeting in Kazan on Wednesday, just two days after the two sides reached a breakthrough agreement on patrolling along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, addressing newspersons in Kazan, confirmed the meeting. “I can confirm that there will be a bilateral meeting between PM Modi and President Xi Jinping tomorrow (Wednesday) on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit,” he said.The bilateral meeting comes as Beijing has confirmed the agreement reached with India on the LAC patrolling. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in Beijing today, when asked to confirm the news: “Over a recent period of time, China and India have reached resolutions on issues concerning the border area following close communication through diplomatic and military channels. China commends the progress made and will continue working with India for the sound implementation of these resolutions.”On Monday, Foreign Secretary Misri announced the breakthrough agreement at a special briefing in New Delhi. “Over the last several weeks, Indian and Chinese diplomatic and military negotiators have been in close contact with each other in a variety of forums. “As a result of these discussions, agreement has been arrived at patrolling arrangements along the line of actual control in the India China border areas, leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020. We will be taking the next steps on this.” Speaking at the NDTV World Summit, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Monday that with the agreement, Indian and Chinese soldiers will be able to resume patrolling in the way they had been doing before the border face-off began in May 2020. “We reached an agreement on patrolling, and we have gone back to the 2020 position. With that we can say the disengagement with China has been completed. Details will come out in due course,” EAM said.” There are areas which for various reasons after 2020, they blocked us, we blocked them. We have now reached an understanding which will allow patrolling as we had been doing till 2020,” the EAM said.

He said the LAC breakthrough is a good development that happened due to “patient and persevering diplomacy”.”… At various points of time people almost gave up. We have always maintained on the one hand we obviously had to do counter deployment, and we have been negotiating since September 2020. It has been a very patient process, though more complicated than how it should have been,” he added.He said this mutual understanding on patrolling will help to regain the peace and tranquility of the pre-2020 in the border areas, and added: “Hopefully, we will be able to come back to that peace and tranquility.”The standoff in the Ladakh sector of the Sino-Indian border erupted in mid-2020, leading to a bitter clash between the forces of the two nations in June that year in Galwan area. Twenty Indian soldiers were killed in the clash. Elaborating on the agreement reached with China, Foreign Secretary Misri said at the briefing in Kazan: “Well, what it will entail is that in the pending areas under discussion, patrolling and indeed grazing activities, wherever applicable, will revert to the situation as it obtained in 2020. Incidentally, I should say that this is also what the External Affairs Minister was talking about yesterday when he was speaking at the NDTV World Summit, I think. “And as far as the disengagement agreements reached previously are concerned, those agreements were not reopened in these discussions. The agreement that was reached yesterday, very early yesterday morning, was focused on issues that had remained outstanding in the last couple of years. So that is what I would say at this point in time.” He said the arrangement worked out is expected to prevent clashes as happened in the past on the LAC. “We will have to make continuous efforts that the mechanisms of the agreement will be such that such clashes can be stopped,” he added.