Meeting on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gathering in Moscow, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, reached five points of agreement.

In a joint statement released early on Friday, the two foreign ministers said the stand-off was “not in the interest of either side”, and “the border troops of both sides should continue their dialogue, quickly disengage, maintain proper distance and ease tensions”.

“The ministers agreed that as the situation eases, the two sides should expedite work to conclude new confidence-building measures to maintain and enhance peace and tranquillity in the border areas,” the statement said, adding that both sides should avoid any action that could escalate matters.

China-India stand-off: ‘narrow opportunity’ for foreign ministers to cool border tensions

Border tensions between the two countries have mounted in recent months, peaking in June with a clash in the Galwan Valley that left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead and an unknown number of Chinese casualties.

In a Chinese foreign ministry statement after the Moscow meeting, Wang said China-India relations had reached “a crossroad”, and both sides would have to stick to the correct path.

According to Associated Press and Reuters, Indian officials said Jaishankar told Wang that India was deeply concerned about the build-up of Chinese forces on the Line of Actual Control on the poorly defined border.

Jaishankar said the immediate task would be for troops to step back from the “areas of friction” so that things did not get worse, an Indian source said.

The latest stand-off is over an area that has the world’s highest landing strip and a glacier that feeds one of the largest irrigation systems in the world. Temperatures in the inhospitable terrain can go as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius in winter.

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Fudan University international relations professor Lin Minwang said it was too early to say if the border tensions had reached a turning point, with India stopping short of an explicit commitment to withdraw troops.

“I think if Indian troops do not withdraw from their position, occupied since late August, the probability of resolving the stand-off by the end of the year is low,” Lin said.

He said both sides apparently realised the need for a new arrangement to manage their border areas but the difficulty of reaching a consensus should not be underestimated.

“The existing arrangement has been damaged – at least rules were violated with the firing-in-the-air incident, and the Line of Actual Control was breached,” he said.

Liu Zongyi, a South Asia expert with the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, agreed that trust had been damaged.

“The original confidence-building measures to keep peace and tranquillity at the border – including the no-fire rule – has been broken, especially after the fatal clash at Galwan Valley on June 15,” Liu said, referring to what Chinese experts see as New Delhi’s effective authorisation for forward troops to open fire in the aftermath of the deadly brawl.

“Both sides have had several diplomatic consultations since the tension arose in the Galwan Valley and Pangong Tso, but what the Indian foreign affairs and defence departments said was not consistent with what they did. We still need to observe and ... to be prepared for any eventuality.”

Retired Indian Lt-General DS Hooda said frontline commanders would need political leaders to clarify the process of disengaging troops in the disputed border areas.

“The principle of disengagement has to be decided at the political level. It cannot be decided by the commanders,” said Hooda, who was the commanding officer of the Indian Army’s Northern Command.