New Delhi: After a gap of over two years, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi on Thursday evening arrived in Delhi on a visit that signals a substantial thaw in the relationship frozen due to the ongoing military stand-off in eastern Ladakh.
There had been media reports on the visit for the last 10 days, however, there was no announcement by either country before Yi’s visit to India. This is highly unusual, as high-level visits, especially those of foreign ministers and above, are always formally publicised at least a day earlier.
Wang Yi is scheduled to meet with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and external affairs minister S. Jaishankar on Friday morning. A call on the Indian Prime Minister is still not planned but could occur.
According to flight tracking apps, a plane landed in New Delhi before 8 pm from Kabul. The Chinese foreign minister was the highest-ranking official from the country to visit Afghanistan after the Taliban took over Kabul.
Earlier, the Chinese foreign minister had travelled to Islamabad to attend the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting. He is scheduled to go to Kathmandu from New Delhi.
The Indian and Chinese military have been at a stand-off since May 2020, when Chinese troops poured through the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and advanced their patrolling positions in eastern Ladakh. It began with clashes in the Galwan valley and other areas, which led to a military stand-off that is still ongoing.
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China had also called for relations with India to remain on a normal keel, while keeping the stand-off on the backburner. However, New Delhi had always insisted that the eastern Ladakh stand-off, which had already taken the lives of at least two dozen soldiers, had to be resolved before the relationship could be normalised.
While a couple of friction points at Galwan, Pangong and Hot Springs had led to limited disengagement of frontline troops, there were still significant differences about Depsang plains.
A day earlier, India reacted strongly to Wang Yi’s reported endorsement of OIC’s views on Kashmir.
India had brought up the LAC stand-off issue during the summit meetings with Japan and Australia earlier this month. “We also made it clear that until and unless we had a resolution of the issues involved with peace and tranquility in the border areas, we could not consider the relationship (with China) to be business as usual and normalcy in relationship would depend on progress on the issues that we are discussing,” Indian foreign secretary Harsh Shringla had said on March 19.