New Delhi:
Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, after three-hour talks with his visiting Chinese counterpart Wang Yi today, described ties as “Work In Progress” and progressing in slower pace than desirable. The relationship is “not normal”, he said, because of the border friction.
“Frictions, tensions rising from Chinese deployments since April 2020 cannot be reconciled with a normal relationship. Restoration of peace and tranquillity must find full expression in talks,” Mr Jaishankar told the media.
“If you ask me if our relationship today is normal, then my answer is ‘no it is not normal’ (because of the Chinese deployments). Our effort today is to sort out the issue in its entirety,” he said.
He said the discussions centred on bilateral relations that had been disturbed by China’s actions at the border.
“We have a situation where peace and tranquillity in border has been disturbed,” he said.
In Ladakh, there were still ongoing friction areas and there was “progress in other areas”, said the Foreign Minister. “Our discussion today was how to take this forward. So long as there are very large deployments in the border areas, clearly the border area situation is not normal. We have a situation there which is not normal,” he said.
