NEW DELHI — India and China have agreed to defuse the nearly three-week-old standoff between troops in the disputed border region of Ladakh, Kashmir, the Indian foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, told reporters on Friday after meeting in New York with her Chinese counterpart. The two sides agreed to begin withdrawing troops immediately to the positions they occupied on Sept. 1, Ms. Swaraj said. India and China have sparred for decades over their border, but the recent face-off was unusually long and tense, coming just before a landmark meeting between President Xi Jinping of China and India‘s new prime minister, Narendra Modi. At times the confrontation overshadowed the two leaders’ discussion about deepening trade relations. India and China fought a war in the high-altitude border region in 1962, and for years India has been urging China to agree to a formal demarcation of the boundary. Many areas remain in dispute, with each country pressing its claim by building up infrastructure like roads, telephone lines and airstrips and by sending troops on regular patrols. The present dispute began when workers on the Indian side began constructing a canal at the “line of actual control” in the village of Demchok. Chinese civilians began to protest, carrying flags and banners and shouting slogans, and the People’s Liberation Army supported them. Simrandeep Singh, Ladakh’s top civil servant, insisted that the canal was meant for civilian purposes, but construction was halted. Thupstan Chhewang, a legislator from Ladakh, said that India “asserted its position much more effectively by outnumbering Chinese troops.” Though the agreement to withdraw to previous positions appeared to have defused the situation, he said, “this is not a long-term solution.” “The long term solution is to lay down the border properly,” Mr. Chhewang said. The Chinese foreign ministry posted a statement after the meeting in New York, saying that China and India should “maintain high-level interactions, increase mutual trust, deepen practical cooperation, intensify friendly exchanges between the two peoples, work in concert to build a more closely-knit partnership of development and carry out bilateral strategic partnership in every aspect of life.”
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 17:48:11 +0000
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