India Seeks To Reconcile Relations And Asks For No Third Party Influence On Bilateral Ties With China

On July 14, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar conveyed to the Director of the Chinese Foreign Affairs Commission Wang Yi for the negation of the role of any third party or its interests in the growing bilateral relationship between India and China.

After India and China’s agreement in October last year, Jaishankar, at his conference last week, expressed contentment over the Indian army restarting patrolling in the Demchok and Depsang Plain areas. Additionally, he stated that a “stable border” is the cornerstone of steady bilateral ties between the two nations and endorsed that both armies emphasise on scaling down after the transgression in East Ladakh and the Galwan skirmish between the two armies five years ago. 

Both armies have some 50,000 troops along with boilers and hefty artilleries installed on both sides of the 1,597 km Line of Actual Control (LAC) in East Ladakh. 

In the same line of keeping ties stronger, Jaishankar expressed how China should safeguard predictable supply chains and not levy trade and shipping restrictions to India. Of late, China enacted export checks on raw materials used in the development of lodestones used in vehicle production and Potassium-Nitrogen manures. 

It is agreed that the consultation concerning the two leaders was amiable with Jaishankar firmly stating that third countries should not be permitted to influence India-China bilateral ties. The statement is significant as China provides 81% of Pakistan’s armed hardware, whose arsenals and airstrikes was on complete demonstration during India’s Operation Sindoor, according to Indian Aerospace and Defence Bulletin.

At the meeting on July 13, terrorism was the key focus of the Indian Minister during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Foreign Minister’s visit. While the SCO was created to tackle the issues of terrorism, separatism and radicalism, he laid out that the Indian presence on terrorist camps in Pakistan was in line with the UN Security Council resolution 16050 passed on April 25 after the Pahalgam terror attack.

“It was deliberately conducted to undermine the tourism economy of Jammu and Kashmir, while sowing a religious divide”, he added, calling for the SCO to take an “uncompromising position” on the challenge of terrorism, and referring to the UN Security Council resolution issued in April about the attack.

The resolution was unanimously sanctioned by the UNSC including the consents of the states of Pakistan, China and Russia. It endows countries to hold “perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of terror” liable and for them to be brought to justice. The same resolution condemned the Pahalgam attack and called terrorism one of the most serious threats to global armistice and security.