India & China Hold 12th Round Of Military Talks, Positive Outcome On Disengagement Awaited

New Delhi: India and China are holding another round of high-level military talks to move forward on the disengagement process in the remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh.

The 12th round of Corps Commander-level talks is taking place at the Moldo border point on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, they said.

The talks started at 10:30 AM as scheduled.

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The Indian delegation is led by Leh-based XIV Corps chief Lt Gen PGK Menon and Naveen Srivastava, the Additional Secretary (East Asia) in the Ministry of External Affairs.

On the other hand, the Chinese military delegation is headed by Commander of the PLA’s Western Theatre Command Xu Qiling, who was appointed earlier this month.

India is hopeful of a positive outcome on the disengagement process in Hot Springs and Gogra, news agency PTI credited sources as saying.

The 12th round of talks is taking place after a gap of over three and a half months as the 11th round of military dialogue had taken place on April 9 at the Chushul border point on the Indian side of the LAC and it lasted for about 13 hours.

This comes weeks after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar firmly conveyed to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that the 14-month standoff and the prolongation of the existing situation in eastern Ladakh were visibly impacting the bilateral ties in a “negative manner”.

The two foreign ministers had held a one-hour bilateral meeting on the sidelines of a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Tajik capital city Dushanbe on July 14.

In the meeting, EAM Jaishankar stressed that any unilateral change in the status quo along the LAC was “not acceptable” to India and that the overall ties can only develop after full restoration of peace and tranquillity in eastern Ladakh.

In the military talks held in April, both sides discussed ways to take forward the disengagement process in Hot Springs, Gogra, and Depsang with a larger aim to bring down tensions in the region. But there was no forward movement in the disengagement process after that.