KOLKATA: External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar on Friday said that the present downturn in bilateral relations was created by China and not by India, maintaining that it takes two hands to clap for a relationship to work.
The minister said this after delivering the Shyama Prasad Lecture on ‘New India and the World’ here.
“It finally takes two hands to clap and China too must have the belief in a workable relationship,” he said when asked whether the two Asian giants can have a working relationship.
If there has to be a decent working relationship, China needs to observe the agreements made in 1993 and 1996 on the Line of Actual Control, Jaishankar said.
External Affairs Minister’s comments a couple of days after he said that the state of border will determine the state of relationship between India and China, amid an over three-year military standoff along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh.
Referring to India’s ties with China, he said the relationship is going through a “difficult phase” because of violation of agreements relating to management of the border.
The Indian and Chinese troops are locked in the confrontation in certain friction points in eastern Ladakh even as the two sides completed disengagement from several areas following extensive diplomatic and military talks.
“At the end of the day for us, we recognise that it (China) is a neighbour, it is a big neighbour. Today it is a very significant economy and significant power,” Jaishankar said.
He said any relationship has to be based on a “high degree of mutuality” and there has to be respect for each other’s interests and sensitivities.
“And there has to be an adherence to agreements which were reached between us and it is that departure from what was agreed between us is today at the heart of the difficult phase that we are passing through with China,” he said.
“The bottom line there is that at the end of the day, the state of the border will determine the state of the relationship and the state of the border today is still abnormal,” Jaishankar said.
India has made it very clear to China that until there is peace and tranquillity in border areas, the relationship between the two countries cannot progress.
