External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that India and China are going through a “particularly bad patch” in their ties because Beijing has taken a set of actions in violation of agreements for which it still don’t have a “credible explanation” and it is for the Chinese leadership to answer where they want to take the bilateral relationship.
“I don’t think the Chinese have any doubt on where we stand on our relationship and what’s not gone right with it. I’ve been meeting my counterpart Wang Yi a number of times. As you would’ve experienced, I speak fairly clear, reasonably understandably there is no lack of clarity so if they want to hear it I am sure they would have heard it,” Jaishankar said in response to a question at a panel “Greater Power Competition: The Emerging World Order” at the Bloomberg New Economic Forum here.
“We are going through a particularly bad patch in our relationship because they have taken a set of actions in violation of agreements for which they still don’t have a credible explanation and that indicates some rethink about where they want to take our relationship, but that’s for them to answer,” he further said, in an apparent reference to the eastern Ladakh border clash with China.
The eastern Ladakh border standoff between the Indian and Chinese militaries erupted on May 5 last year following a violent clash in the Pangong lake areas and both sides gradually enhanced their deployment by rushing in tens of thousands of soldiers as well as heavy weaponry.
The tension escalated following a deadly clash in Galwan Valley on June 15 last year.
As a result of a series of military and diplomatic talks, the two sides completed the disengagement process in the north and south banks of the Pangong lake in February and in the Gogra area in August. The last round of military talks on October 10 ended in a stalemate.
Meanwhile, on Thursday the two sides agreed to hold the 14th round of military talks at an early date to achieve the objective of complete disengagement in remaining friction points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
