India says ready for all eventualities amid border tensions with China
India’s defense minister says his country is prepared to deal with all contingencies amid ongoing border tensions with China.
In an address to parliament on Tuesday, Rajnath Singh told lawmakers that India wanted a peaceful resolution of border tensions but was prepared to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The minister said the current border tensions with neighboring China were serious and the result of what he called Beijing’s violations of boundary agreements.
Singh said that the situation was tense “both in terms of troops involved and number of friction points” but India wanted to pursue dialog for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Both Beijing and New Delhi have blamed each other for transgressions along their disputed frontier over the past few months.
Chinese military spokesman Senior Col. Zhang Shuili in a recent statement accused India of a cross-border firing incident and overall ratcheting up of border tensions.
“We demand the Indian side to immediately stop dangerous actions, withdraw cross-line troops right away, strictly restrain its frontline troops, earnestly investigate and punish the personnel who fired shots, and guarantee against the occurrence of similar incidents,” the statement read.
The long-running border dispute over the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto frontier between Beijing and New Delhi, turned deadly on June 16 for the first time in nearly half a century after at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a violent face-off.
The disputed 3,500-km border between the world’s two most populous countries stretches from the Ladakh region in the north to the eastern Indian state of Sikkim.
India unilaterally separated Ladakh from disputed Kashmir in August 2019, ending its semi-autonomous status and straining ties with Beijing. China strongly condemned the move, raising the issue at the United Nations Security Council.
Despite several rounds of military and diplomatic talks, the dispute remains. India and China have not been able to agree on their border, over which they went to war in 1962.
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