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The Indian Army will disengage with the Chinese military along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh after the status quo of April 2020 is restored, Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi said on Tuesday.
“As far as we are concerned, we want to go back to the status quo of April 2020,” ANI quoted Dwivedi as saying. “Thereafter we will be looking at disengagement, de-escalation and normal management of the LAC…This has been our stand since April 2020.”
The comments by the Army chief came a day after New Delhi announced that India and China had reached a patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control “leading to the disengagement” of the two countries’ militaries in eastern Ladakh.
Border tensions between India and China escalated after June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control. It led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Beijing said that the clash left four of its soldiers dead.
Since the Galwan clashes, China and India have held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks to resolve their border standoff.
Dwivedi said that the “normal management” of the Line of Actual Control will be achieved in a phased manner, PTI reported.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri did not provide more details about the agreement on Monday. The Ministry of External Affairs also did not clarify at the time if the two sides had completed their disengagement in the region.
Dwivedi also said on Tuesday that there are ongoing attempts to restore trust between the two sides. “It will get restored once we are able to see each other and we are able to convince and reassure each other that we are not creeping into buffer zones that have been created,” he added.
On Monday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that the agreement would mean that “we have gone back to the 2020 position”. “With that we can say the disengagement with China has been completed,” he said at an event organised by NDTV.
“There are areas, which for various reasons after 2020, they blocked us, we blocked them,” he said. “We have now reached an understanding, which will allow patrolling as we had been doing till 2020.”
The agreement is a “positive development” and its details will be made public “in due course”, Jaishankar added.
On Tuesday, China also confirmed that the two sides had arrived at a resolution on the “relevant matters”.
“Over a recent period, China and India have been in close communication through diplomatic and military channels on issues related to the China-India border,” PTI quoted Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian as saying.