China-India border dispute: ministers speak for first time in 5 months, urge more talks

Name: China shares video of deadly 2020 border clash with Indian troops in Galwan Valley
Uploaded: 2021-02-26T05:28:24.000Z
Duration: 1 min 31 s
Description: China shares video of deadly 2020 border clash with Indian troops in Galwan Valley

Wang Yi and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar hold phone call after both sides disengage troops from border

Jaishankar says they discussed acting on consensus reached last year, while Wang raises concern that India may have changed course in recent days

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Foreign ministers Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Wang Yi last met in person at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in September. Photo: Reuters

Sarah Zheng

Published: 1:28pm, 26 Feb 2021Updated: 4:59pm, 26 Feb 2021

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has spoken to his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar for the first time in five months and called for more dialogue to ease tensions in their countries’ months-long border stand-off.

The 75-minute telephone call on Thursday came after troops from both sides disengaged from their disputed border. Wang said front-line troops had completed their disengagement from the Pangong Tso glacial lake area in the Himalayas, but that India’s policy on China had in recent days had “wavered and gone in reverse” in a way that was “not in line with both sides’ interests”.

“The rights and wrongs of last year’s situation at the China-India border are very clear,” he said, according to a statement from China’s foreign ministry. “The experience of the past 10 years has continued to show that giving more prominence to our disagreements does not help to resolve the issues, and will erode the foundation of our mutual trust.”

Wang added that the two sides needed to work further to ease the situation by improving border management mechanisms and the process of engaging in border talks to build mutual trust, noting how difficult it had been for both sides to disengage troops.

01:31

China shares video of deadly 2020 border clash with Indian troops in Galwan Valley

Jaishankar tweeted on Thursday that the two had “reviewed the status of disengagement” and discussed implementation of the consensus that he and Wang reached when they met last September on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Moscow – the last known conversation between the foreign ministers.

At the time, Jaishankar and Wang reached a five-point consensus for disengagement and de-escalation at the border.