India's relationship with China is “complex” and the two neighbours cannot have a “normal” bilateral relationship if there is “transgression” in the border areas, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said here on Wednesday.
Addressing a meeting hosted by the Diplomatic Academy of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Shringla also said the process of disengagement of Indian and Chinese soldiers in eastern Ladakh is expected to be concluded in the next two to three days.
He said that the relationship between the two Asian giants is definitely dependent on the normal situation at the border.
“As I told our friends in China, we cannot have a normal bilateral relationship if there is no peace and tranquility in our border areas. The relationship is definitely dependent on the normal situation at the border,” Shringla, on a two-day official visit to Moscow, said.
“We cannot have our troops having loss of life, having situation of transgression at the border and still go about a normal relationship,” he said.
Indian and Chinese militaries are locked in a bitter standoff in eastern Ladakh since May last year.
The two countries last week reached an agreement on disengagement in the North and South banks of Pangong lake in eastern Ladakh that mandates both sides to “cease” forward deployment of troops in a “phased, coordinated and verifiable” manner, in a breakthrough after a nine-month border standoff.
“In the last few days we…
