None other than external affairs minister Salman Khurshid strongly hinted to the media while flying back from Tehran on Friday that his proposed departure for Beijing on May 9 might not prove productive. The reason, he said, was the Chinese response to India’s suggestion that its 30-odd soldiers who pitched tents on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh a fortnight ago return to their previous positions in order to allow for a meaningful dialogue about border delineation (and in the interim to preserve tranquillity on the border).
If Beijing’s response is not one that offers hopes of worthwhile talks, there simply won’t be any point in Mr Khurshid travelling to Beijing. Three rounds of flag meetings on the LAC have produced no result and the Chinese soldiers refuse to pack up their tents.
Before the present troubles broke out in Ladakh, the external affairs minister was to go to Beijing to prepare for the visit of the new Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang. India was to have been his first port of call since being named PM a few months ago. Naturally, if Mr Khurshid cancels his proposed trip, the visit to India of the Chinese Premier is not expected to happen. We’ll have to learn to live with that.
With the situation on the border having turned unpleasant (although shooting is not expected and would be a surprise, even allowing for Chinese inscrutability) for no identifiable proximate reason right on the eve of the Chinese Premier’s proposed visit later this month, there is no point going through the motions. People in India won’t be impressed.
The Sino-Indian border is not delineated. Both sides are making do with a LAC. In many parts of the long undefined boundary, the claims of the two countries lie on the other side of the LAC from them. Considering this complexity, through bilateral agreement to avoid border clashes in spite of the ambiguities, tranquillity has been maintained in the border regions for a while. The two sides can take credit for this.
True, the boundary cannot in perpetuity remain without demarcation. That will be a factor of trouble for ever. It is possible that the Chinese have chosen to push their men into what we think is our side of the boundary, and also pitch tents, to force India to apply itself to the task of fixing the border. But its timing — to coincide with Premier Li’s visit — is all wrong. It reeks of Pyongyang-style tactics. And Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got it wrong when he thought the trouble in Ladakh was a “localised” matter.