'Relations with China going through very difficult phase'
Munich: India's relationship with China is right now going through a "very difficult phase" after Beijing violated agreements not to bring the military forces in the border, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said, emphasising that the "state of the border will determine the state of the relationship".
Speaking at a panel discussion on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) 2022 here, Jaishankar said that India was having a problem with China along the Line of Actual Control.
"For 45 years, there was peace, there was stable border management, there were no military casualties on the border from 1975. That changed because we had agreements with China not to bring military forces to the border (the Line of Actual Control or LAC) and the Chinese violated those agreements, the minister said in response to a question from moderator Lynn Kuok.
"Now, the state of the border will determine the state of the relationship. That's natural. So obviously, the relations with China right now are going through a very difficult phase, he added.
The eastern Ladakh border standoff between the Indian and Chinese militaries erupted following a violent clash in the Pangong lake areas and both sides gradually enhanced their deployment by rushing in tens of thousands of soldiers as well as heavy weaponry.
The tension escalated following a deadly clash in the Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020.
Jaishankar, who was in Melbourne last week, had said that the situation at the LAC has arisen due to the disregard of written agreements by China in 2020 not to mass soldiers at the border and noted that Beijing's actions have become an issue of "legitimate
concern" for the entire international community.
Meanwhile, dismissing the notion that the Quad is an Asian NATO, Jaishankar has also said that there are "interested parties" who advance such analogies and one should not slip into it, underlining that the four-nation grouping is a kind of 21st century way of responding to a more diversified and dispersed world.
"Quad is a grouping of four countries who have common interests, common values, a great deal of comfort, who happen to be located at four corners of the Indo-Pacific, who found out that in this world no country, not even the US, has the ability to address global challenges all on their own," Jaishankar said.
Jaishankar dismissed the notion that the four-member grouping is an Asian-NATO as completely misleading term and said there are interested parties who advance that kind of analogies.
