Galwan Valley Clashes Left India And China Relationship 'Profoundly Disturbed' : MEA Jaishankar

Jaishankar said India has built a relationship with China over the course of the last 30 years and a basis for building that relationship has been peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control.

(File Photo/ AFP)

New Delhi: Amid the ongoing border dispute in eastern Ladakh, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday said that the presence of a large number of Chinese troops with weapons at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) posed a “very critical” security challenge to India. Also Read|Prithvi-2 Missile, Capable Of Carrying Nukes, Blasts Off From Odisha Coast Under User Trial Stressing that the Galwan incident on June 15, when 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese soldiers were killed in violent clashes, has left the bilateral relationship “profoundly disturbed”, Jaishankar said the massing of troops at the border has created a “very critical security challenge”. The Union Minister underlined that he has not got any “reasonable explanation” from his Chinese counterpart on China’s behaviour along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. Jaishankar also pointed to divergences with Beijing on “political issues” and “the relationship with Pakistan”. He said China has been “unsympathetic” to India on major trade issues like market access and “negative” on a “lot of international issues like the Nuclear Suppliers Group”.

Jaishankar, speaking at a virtual event hosted by the Asia Society, said India has built the relationship with China over the last 30 years and its basis has been peace and tranquility along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). He said there are multiple agreements, starting from 1993, which created the framework for that peace and tranquility and limited the military forces that came to the border areas, how to manage the border, how border troops behave when they approach each other.

"So, from the conceptual level down to the behavioural level, there was an entire sort of framework out there. Now, what we saw this year was a departure from this entire series of agreements. The massing of a large number of Chinese forces on the border was clearly contrary to all of this. And when you had friction point which was a large number of troops at different points very close to each other, then something tragic like what happened on the 15th of June happened," he said.

“There are today a very large number of troops(of PLA) with weapons concentrated on that segment of the border and that is obviously a very critical security challenge that we face, said Jaishankar, speaking at a virtual event hosted by the Asia Society. Also Read|Highway Attacks: Six Militant Associates Arrested, 6 Vehicles Seized In Jammu & Kashmir Jaishankar said apart from the Wuhan Summit in April 2018, there was a similar summit in Chennai last year and its idea was that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping spend time, talk to each other directly about their concerns.

"What happened this year, of course, was a very sharp departure. Now it's not just a sharp departure from the conversation, it's a sharp departure over a course of relationship over 30 years," he said.

In response to a question on what did the Chinese actually do on the border and why they did it, Jaishankar said: "I haven't frankly got any reasonable explanation that I can tell myself from them on this matter."