Amid claims by China that the LAC situation in eastern Ladakh is starting to get normal, foreign minister S Jaishankar said peace and tranquillity in the border areas “clearly remains the basis for normal relations between India and China”.
While emphasising that continuation of the current border impasse will not benefit either India or China, he also warned that “new normals of posture will inevitably lead to new normals of responses”. While troop disengagement has been effected at several friction points, the process is yet to be fully completed and India continues to maintain that the bilateral relationship can’t be restored till the time the standoff in the remaining areas is resolved.
“Peace and tranquillity in the border areas remains the basis for normal ties,” he said, adding that from time to time, this has been “mischievously conflated” with the sorting out of the boundary question.
“It is the willingness to take a long-term view of their ties that the two countries must display today,” he said in an address at a conference on ‘China’s Foreign Policy and International Relations in the New Era’. He said the last few years have been a period of “serious challenge”, both for the relationship and for the prospects of the Asian continent. (TNN)
