New Delhi: India and China will be holding yet another round of talks under the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) framework even as the disengagement process in the Ladakh sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has remained “complex”.
According to sources, the WMCC meeting will be held Thursday. The Indian delegation will be led by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) joint secretary for East Asia, while China is to be represented by the director general of the foreign ministry’s boundary and oceanic department, the sources said.
The last round of WMCC meeting took place last month, after which New Delhi had said both sides discussed “expeditious completion” of the disengagement process, and that Beijing was “not fully cooperating”.
Despite a series of talks both at the military as well as diplomatic levels, the Chinese have not disengaged from the Finger areas, Depsang Plains and Gogra region along the LAC. They continue to maintain a heavy troops presence there, the sources said.
The present standoff between Indian and Chinese troops has been going on since early May, and resulted in a deadly clash between the two sides in June when India lost 20 soldiers. China did not disclose its casualty figure.
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‘Can be done only through mutually agreed actions’
In the past week, India’s Ambassador to China Vikram Misri held a series of meetings with senior officials of the Chinese Communist Party and officials from the Central Military Commission and briefed them on “India’s stance regarding the situation on the borders in eastern Ladakh”.
While the disengagement process has had some progress, the procedure remains “complex” when it comes to translating the principles of disengagement on the ground, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said last week.
“While we would like the ongoing disengagement process to be completed at the earliest, it is important to bear in mind that achieving this requires agreed actions by both sides… Translating these principles on ground is a complex process that requires re-deployment of troops by each side towards their regular posts on their respective sides of the LAC. It is natural that this can be done only through mutually agreed reciprocal actions,” Srivastava said.
He added, “This is also necessary and essential in the context of overall development of our bilateral relationship.”
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