External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday said that about 75% of the “disengagement problems” with China on the military standoff along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh have been “sorted out”, The Indian Express reported.

The bigger problem, however, is the increasing militarisation of the border, Jaishankar said while speaking at Switzerland’s Global Centre for Security Policy.

Border tensions between India and China have increased since June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley. It had led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Beijing had 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 the border standoff.

On Thursday, Jaishankar reiterated that the negotiations between the two sides to find a solution to the military standoff are on.

“We still have some things to do,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying. “There is a bigger issue that both of us have brought forces close up and in that sense, there is a militarisation of the border”.

Jaishankar added: “How does one deal with it?…In the meanwhile, after the clash, it has affected the entirety of the relationship because you cannot have violence at the border and then say the rest of the relationship is insulated from it.”

The external affairs minister said that both countries can hope to look at “other possibilities” if there is a “solution to the disengagement and there is a return to peace and tranquillity”.

The clashes that took place in 2020 were “in violation of multiple agreements for some reasons which are still entirely not clear” to Delhi, the minister was quoted as saying.

“We have now been negotiating close to four years and the first step of that is what we called disengagement, which is their troops go back to their normal operating bases and our troops go back to their normal operating bases and, where required, we have an arrangement about patrolling because both of us patrol regularly in that border, as I said it is not a legally delineated border,” he said.

NSA Ajit Doval meets Chinese foreign minister

Hours later on Thursday, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval met Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, at the sidelines of a BRICS meeting at Saint Petersburg in Russia. BRICS is a multilateral group comprising the world’s major emerging economies.

In a statement, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said that the meeting between Doval and Yi gave the two sides an opportunity to review the “recent efforts towards finding an early resolution of the remaining issues” along the Line of Actual Control.

It added that this would create conditions to “stabilise and rebuild” bilateral relations.

The statement added: “Both sides agreed to work with urgency and redouble their efforts to realise complete disengagement in the remaining areas. NSA [National Security Adviser] conveyed that peace and tranquillity in border areas and respect for LAC are essential for normalcy in bilateral relations.”

The two countries must abide by bilateral agreements, protocols and understandings reached in the past, the statement read. “The two sides agreed that the India-China bilateral relationship is significant not just for the two countries but also for the region and the world,” it added.

Also read: Why accepting ‘differing perceptions’ on the LAC might be hurting India strategically