The Indian army chief has said that border tensions with China can be resolved through dialogue as the senior officials from both sides prepared to meet. Speaking at the end of a two-day visit to the mountainous border region with China where tensions flared up again this week, General Manoj Mukund Naravane said he was “sure that the problem can be resolved fully through talks”. Naravane described the situation on the border as “slightly tense” in an interview with Reuters affiliate ANI in the Indian city of Leh. Thousands of soldiers and additional military hardware have been amassed on both sides of the disputed border and there have been no signs of troop reductions. China and India’s defence ministers were expected to meet in Moscow on Friday for their first in-person meeting since the start of the current stand-off. China’s Wei Fenghe and his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh were in Russia for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation defence ministers. Latest India-China border clash turns spotlight on Tibetan refugees in Special Frontier Force In addition, Indian external affairs minister S Jaishankar and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi also took part in a video conference on Friday for BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) foreign ministers. Wang and Jaishankar are expected to meet again next Thursday on the sidelines of an SCO foreign ministers’ meeting, also to be held in Moscow. Officials in India’s defence establishment said that Friday’s meeting in Moscow would be crucial because it would mark the first significant political intervention since the stand-off began in early May. The officials said that they were “cautiously optimistic” about the outcome. “We are hopeful that the meeting ends with a breakthrough, especially since China asked for the meeting,” said a source. Officials in the Indian defence ministry said the country would “reiterate” its stance that Chinese troops must return to the positions occupied in April. “At this point, restoring the status quo is very essential for us to safeguard our interests or else we would end up redrawing the [Line of Actual Control],” said one official. This week, tensions flared once more at Pangong Tso, a high mountain lake, where the two sides cannot agree on where the border lies. China and India have been locked in a series of border stand-offs and skirmishes since May. In June, a clash in the Galwan Valley left 20 Indian soldiers dead and caused an undisclosed number of Chinese casualties. Since the Galwan clash, India has retaliated by barring Chinese enterprises from bidding in Indian road construction contracts, and blocked more than 100 Chinese apps for mobile phones from the Indian market, including TikTok, WeChat and Alipay, whose parent company Alibaba also owns the South China Morning Post . Meanwhile China’s ambassador to Moscow Zhang Hanhui weighed in on the China-India conflict in an interview with Russian newspaper Trud published on Friday. India-China border stand-off: military force key to national security, says Modi’s defence chief Zhang said China had no wish to conduct trade wars with any nation, in response to questions about Indian restrictions placed on Chinese enterprises. In India, there is a growing belief that talks between diplomats and military leaders will not resolve the situation. “We need the political leadership to step up. By now, ideally, [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] and [Indian Prime Minister] Narendra Modi should have picked up the phone and spoken to each other,” said a retired Indian lieutenant general, who now has a government role and spoke on condition of anonymity. “Since that can’t happen, the least that can and must happen is that ministers must engage with each other and find a breakthrough.”