We have to take disengagement process forward: Jaishankar on Ladakh row

The relations between India and China cannot be normal if peace and tranquillity in border areas are disturbed, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Friday.

His comments at a press conference came a day after his talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

"I think the issue is that there is an abnormal position in border areas," he said, adding "we had a frank discussion about it."

"We have to take the disengagement process forward," he further said.

Jaishankar and Qin held bilateral talks on Thursday on the sidelines of a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

The meeting between the two foreign ministers was their second in the last two months. The Chinese foreign minister visited India in March to attend a meeting of the G20 foreign ministers.

During the talks, Jaishankar conveyed to his Chinese counterpart that the state of India-China relations is "abnormal" because of the lingering border row in eastern Ladakh.

Last week, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu at a meeting that China's violation of existing border agreements "eroded" the entire basis of ties between the two countries and that all issues relating to the frontier must be resolved in accordance with the existing pacts.

The meeting on April 27 took place in New Delhi on the sidelines of a conclave of the SCO defence ministers.

Days ahead of the meeting between the two defence ministers, the Indian and Chinese armies held 18th round of talks on ending the border row.

In the Corps Commander talks on April 23, the two sides agreed to stay in close touch and work out a mutually acceptable solution to the remaining issues in eastern Ladakh at the earliest.

However, there was no indication of any clear forward movement in ending the three-year row.

The ties between India and China nosedived significantly following the fierce clash in the Galwan Valley in June 2020 that marked the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades.

The Indian and the Chinese troops are locked in a standoff in a few friction points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh for the last three years though they disengaged in several places following a series of military and diplomatic talks.

India has been maintaining that the relationship between the two countries should be based on "three mutuals" -- mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interests.

The eastern Ladakh border standoff erupted on May 5, 2020, following a violent clash in the Pangong lake area.

As a result of a series of military and diplomatic talks, the two sides completed the disengagement process in 2021 on the north and south banks of the Pangong lake and in the Gogra area.