Talking Peace, Tearing Up Peace Pacts

TALKING PEACE, TEARING UP PEACE PACTS: Talking peace, tearing up peace pacts Despite Beijing and Delhi’s negotiations, since 2020, to resolve their border dispute, recent activities show that a truce is still a long way off, writes Amit Agnihotri China has been talking peace with India for over two years now to resolve the bitter border row along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh, but relations between the two major Asian powers are far from normal.The reason? Continued Chinese belligerence and violation of the various bilateral peace pacts, which has resulted in a dangerous security situation in the Himalayas.Stressing that strained India-China relations are a roadblock towards the long-cherished goal of the Asian Century, India’s external affairs minister Dr S Jaishankar minced no words as he described the reality.‘If you ask me, is our relationship normal today? My answer to you is no, it is not. And it cannot be normal, if the situation in the border areas is abnormal. And surely the presence of a large number of troops there, in contravention of agreements, is abnormal,’ Jaishankar said in response to a media query recently.‘So long as there are very large deployments in the border areas, which are violative of the 1993 and 1996 agreements, clearly the border area situation is not normal.’The minister was referring to the various peace pacts that were signed between 1993 and 2013 to allow the two countries to negotiate border disputes...