China confirms pact with India to ‘resolve’ conflict over disputed border

Beijing signals ‘positive approval’ for deal as Chinese President Xi and Indian PM Modi attend BRICS summit in Russia.

China has confirmed reaching a deal with India over their disputed border in the Himalayan region, a day after New Delhi said it had struck an agreement with Beijing for military patrols along the frontier.

But the announcement on Tuesday did not explain whether the pact covered the length of the border or just points where the two sides have been involved in a standoff since 2020.

Relations between the world’s two most populous, nuclear-armed neighbours have been strained since clashes between their troops on the largely undemarcated frontier in the western Himalayas’ Ladakh region four years ago killed 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers.

Since the skirmish in 2020, both sides pulled back tens of thousands of soldiers and agreed not to send patrols into a narrow strip surrounding the Line of Actual Control, which is an unofficial division about 3,488km (2,167 miles) long in the Himalayas, with China claiming a considerably shorter section.

It separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety considering it part of its Tibet region.

In 1962, Chinese troops crossed the frontier with India during a dispute over the border’s demarcation, sparking a four-week-long war. China retained Aksai Chin, a strategic corridor linking Tibet to western China.

“Recently, China and India have maintained close communication through diplomatic and military channels on issues relating to the China-India border,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lin Jian told a news briefing in Beijing on Tuesday.

“At present, the two sides have reached a solution to the relevant issues, which China views positively,” Lin said.

On Monday, India’s Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the two sides had reached an agreement on patrolling the border, signalling an end to the military standoff.

The understanding “creates a basis for peace and tranquillity along the border, which were there before 2020”, he said at a conference hosted by Indian broadcaster NDTV.

Lin said China would work with the Indian side to implement the pact, without going into any specifics.

The announcement of the deal came as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping will be in Kazan, Russia, for the BRICS summit of major developing economies.

According to Indian media reports, Modi and Xi could hold talks on the sidelines of the event.

Lin, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, declined to confirm a meeting, only saying that China would issue information “in due course”.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) and China’s President Xi Jinping meet at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, on September 18, 2014 [Ahmad Masood/Reuters]

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Al Jazeera and news agencies