Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping have decided to issue “strategic guidance” to their militaries to strengthen communications to build trust and understanding, India’s top diplomat said today, a move aimed at avoiding a Dokalam-like situation in the future.
Modi said his talks with Xi focussed on diverse areas of India-China cooperation. “We discussed ways to give impetus to our economic ties as well as people-to-people relations. Other areas we spoke about include agriculture, technology, energy and tourism,” he said.
At the end of the two-day informal summit between Modi and Xi in the central Chinese city, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said they underscored the importance of maintaining peace and tranquility in all areas of the India-China border region in the larger interest of the overall development of bilateral relations.
“They issued strategic guidance to their respective militaries to strengthen communication in order to build trust and mutual understanding and enhance predictability and effectiveness in the management of border affairs,” he said.
He said the two leaders directed their militaries to earnestly implement various confidence building measures agreed upon between the two sides, including the principle of mutual and equal security, and strengthen existing institutional arrangements and information sharing mechanisms to prevent incidents in border regions.
They endorsed the work of the special representatives to find a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement on the boundary issue.
The two sides have held 20 rounds of talks to resolve the boundary dispute and worked out different mechanisms to keep peace along the 3,488-km long Line of Actual Control.
“The two leaders were of the view that the two countries have the maturity and wisdom to handle all our differences through peaceful discussions within the context of the overall relationships and bearing in mind, we would respect each other’s sensitivities, concerns and aspirations,” Gokhale said.
Modi and Xi underlined that as two major countries India and China have wider and overlapping regional and global interests. They agreed on the need to strengthen strategic communication through greater consultation on all matters of common interest and believe that such communication will have a positive influence on enhancing mutual understanding, he said.
Asked whether the issue of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar was raised, he said the two leaders “did not go into specifics”. China has repeatedly blocked India’s bid to designate Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN.