In their first such meeting since India’s parliamentary poll, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council meeting on Thursday. Both sides stressed the importance of “mutual respect” in resolving the boundary issues that have frozen ties between them for the past four years.
Mr. Jaishankar told Mr. Wang that it was important that the “Line of Actual Control must be respected and peace and tranquillity in the border areas always ensured”, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) after the meeting, which lasted about an hour, and was held just before the start of the SCO Summit.
“The two Ministers agreed that the prolongation of the current situation in the border areas is not in the interest of either side. EAM highlighted the need to redouble efforts to achieve complete disengagement from the remaining areas in Eastern Ladakh and restore border peace and tranquillity in order to remove obstacles towards return of normalcy in bilateral relations,” the MEA said.
No breakthrough yet
The two Ministers were meeting for the third time in the past 12 months, and have made a push for complete disengagement and the resolution of the military border standoff since April 2020. However, talks between border commanders and defence officials in the meetings of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) have thus far yielded no further breakthrough, which hinges on the Chinese position at the Demchok and Depsang sectors.
In a separate readout of the meeting, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was important to find the “correct way”.
“We must adhere to positive thinking, on the one hand properly handle and control the situation in the border area, on the other hand actively resume normal exchanges, promote each other and meet each other half way,” a translated version of the MFA statement read, with significant wording that did not insist that the border situation be addressed separately. New Delhi has maintained that there will be no normalisation in relations until the border issues are resolved first.
In his comments, Mr. Wang marked the 70th anniversary of the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” or Panchshila, and referred to India and China as countries of the Global South that should work together to “safeguard the interests of the developing world”.
PM skips summit
The meeting between the two Foreign Ministers came even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to skip the SCO Summit, reversing an earlier decision to attend. The summit would have brought the PM face to face with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time since their meeting in South Africa on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in 2023, which also did not lead to any breakthrough in relations.
After a Jaishankar-Wang meeting in February in Germany on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, a meeting of the WMCC, including defence, security and Foreign Ministry officials, was held in Beijing in March, which also did not yield any change in the position at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The MEA statement also said that the two leaders had “exchanged views on the global situation”, and that India had extended its support to China’s presidency of the SCO in 2025.
‘Combating terror is priority’
Speaking at the SCO Council of the Heads of State — which was attended by Mr. Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Central Asian leaders — Mr. Jaishankar also read out Mr. Modi’s address in his absence, reiterating the SCO’s “respect for sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity” as a basis for its foreign policies.
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“We have also agreed not to take any measures contrary to the principles of state sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the PM’s speech read, signalling China. It added that the “priority must naturally be given to combating terrorism, one of the original goals of the SCO”, in a pointed reference at Pakistan. “Cross-border terrorism requires a decisive response and terrorism financing and recruitment must be resolutely countered,” it said.
When asked on Thursday if Mr. Modi would be invited to the SCO’s Head of Government meeting to be held on October 15 and 16 in Islamabad, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that Pakistan would extend an invitation to all heads of government and hopes that “all members of the SCO will attend.” India and Pakistan are the only two members of the SCO where the Prime Ministers attend the Head of State Council, along with the Presidents of the other member countries — Russia, China, Iran, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and newly inducted Belarus.
