India, China hold military level talks amid stand-off in Ladakh

New Delhi : India and China on Saturday held high-level talks amid ongoing border stand-off between the armies of two countries near eastern Ladakh. The talks were requested by India and were held at the Border Personnel Meeting Point in Maldo on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh.

The Indian delegation was led by Lieutenant General Harinder Singh, Commander of 14 Corps, while the Chinese side was headed by the Commander of the Tibet Military District.

Without revealing much about what exactly have been negotiated, the Indian Army in a statement said Indian and Chinese officials continue to remain engaged through the established military and diplomatic channels to address the current situation in the India-China border areas.

India has been claiming that the Chinese Army is hindering their normal patrolling by its troops along the LAC in Ladakh and Sikkim.

This stand-off is the most serious since India and China, who fought a brief war in 1962, were locked in a similar faceoff in Doklam, in the eastern Himalayas, that lasted nearly three months in 2017.

A day before the military-level meeting, on Friday, India and China vowed not to allow their "differences" become disputes and agreed to handle them through peaceful dialogue while respecting each other's sensitivities and concerns. The positive approach came at a diplomatic dialogue through video conference between Naveen Srivastava, joint secretary (East Asia) in the external affairs ministry, and Wu Jianghao, director general in China's foreign ministry.