Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi likely to visit India

New Delhi: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is likely to visit India later this month. The Chinese Foreign Minister is expected to visit Nepal before his India visit.

If the visit happens, it will be the first visit by any senior Chinese leader since the Galwan Valley clash two years back.

India and China have been locked in a high-altitude border stand-off since May 5, 2020 when the troops of both countries engaged in a violent face-off in the Pangong lake area.

The tension between the two countries escalated following a deadly clash in the Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020, the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades. As many as 20 Indian troops laid down their lives in the violent face-off.

In February last year, China officially acknowledged that five Chinese military officers and soldiers were killed in the clashes. However, it is widely believed that the death toll was higher.

Since the violent conflict, the two sides have held multiple military and diplomatic talks to defuse the tension over the last two years.

Last year, the two sides completed the disengagement process in the north and south banks of the Pangong lake and in the Gogra area.

Last week, India and China held a fresh round of high-level military talks to resolve the 22-month-long standoff in certain remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh. The two sides agreed to maintain dialogue via “military and diplomatic channels” to reach a mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues at the earliest. They also agreed to maintain the security and stability on the ground in the Western Sector in the interim.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)