Team Blitz India
BENAULIM (GOA): External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar held bilateral talks with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on May 4, with the border row along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh believed to be in focus.
The talks took place in a beach resort in Benaulim on the sidelines of a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
The three-year border row in eastern Ladakh will be a focus area of the talks, people familiar with the matter said ahead of the meeting.
The Jaishankar-Gang meeting was their second one in the last two months. The Chinese foreign minister visited India in March to attend a meeting of the G20 foreign ministers.
On the sidelines of the meeting, Jaishankar held talks with Qin during which he conveyed to his Chinese counterpart that the state of India-China relations is “abnormal” because of the lingering border row in eastern Ladakh.
Last week, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu at a meeting that China’s violation of existing border agreements “eroded” the entire basis of ties between the two countries and that all issues relating to the frontier must be resolved in accordance with the existing pacts.
