SCO Meet: S Jaishankar likely to meet Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow

New Delhi: External affairs minister S Jaishankar is likely to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow on Thursday during the SCO foreign ministers’ meet which begins on Wednesday. He reaches Moscow on Tuesday. Jaishankar is likely to remind Wang about bilateral agreements on maintaining peace and tranquility along the Sino-Indian Line of Actual Control and demand restoration of the status quo ante of pre-May, ET has learnt. He would also convey to Wang that tensions could impact overall bilateral ties.

Jaishankar may also urge Wang to discipline and control frontline Chinese troops from undertaking provocative actions along LAC. The minister will also tell his counterpart that China’s actions have disregarded earlier understandings between the two foreign ministers and special representatives. Ahead of his maiden foreign visit after the Covid-19 outbreak, Jaishankar had said diplomacy and dialogue were the only ways forward to end the over four-month border tension between the two countries. Jaishankar and Wang had virtual bilateral communications connected to Ric, Brics, SCO and G-20 after Covid-19 curtailed travel. “We have known each other for a long time… I am totally convinced that the solution to the situation has to be found in the domain of diplomacy and I say that with responsibility,” he had said during a virtual discussion on his book last week.

Last Friday, defence minister Rajnath Singh had met with his Chinese counterpart, Gen Wei Fenghe, also in Moscow on the sidelines of the SCO defence ministers meet, where both sides stated formal positions. Despite talks in the last few months yielding some results, the People’s Liberation Army has been intransigent on restoring the status quo ante at LAC. The latest was provocative military manoeuvres on August 29 in an attempt to alter LAC in the South Bank area of Pangong Tso, according to MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava. India had last week said the border tension was a direct result of Chinese actions aimed at effecting unilateral change in the region’s status quo.