Both India and China, currently engaged diplomatically in dousing recent tensions, will be present at the first-ever meeting of Defence Ministers from 18 countries being held in Vietnam on October 12.
Diplomats here confirmed that Union Defence Minister A.K. Antony and his Chinese counterpart, Liang Guanglie, would attend the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM) + 8 format meeting, or ADMM Plus, in Hanoi.
This will be the first high-level ministerial contact between both sides since they sparred over reports suggesting the presence of troops in the Gilgit-Baltistan area of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the denial of a Chinese visa to an Indian Army General on grounds that his area of jurisdiction included Kashmir.
The sources, however, said it was too early to say whether Mr. Antony and Mr. Liang would have a brief pull-aside meeting.
Even though India has “put on hold'' defence exchanges with China over the visa denial incident and has expressed concern over a western report suggesting large-scale Chinese troop presence in Gilgit-Baltistan, officials here said that cooperation in other sectors remained unaffected.
For instance, both sides would coordinate their positions ahead of a climate change meeting in Mexico. Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla recently held the fourth round of financial dialogue in Beijing.
The ADMM Plus meeting will be attended by the Defence Ministers of Association of South East Asian Nations, which has 10 members besides six full dialogue partners — China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, India and New Zealand — and Russia and the U.S.
It will be chaired by Vietnamese Defence Minister Phung Quang Thanh and the next interaction will be held after three years.
Officials referred to the statement by Mr. Liang, during a recent China-Vietnam defence interaction during which he expressed the hope that the ADMM + 8 would become a new platform for ASEAN and other countries in the region to jointly deal with non-traditional security challenges and strengthen mutual trust and cooperation.
At the preparatory meeting for the interaction, Singapore Minister for Defence Teo Chee Hean felt that the ADMM-Plus could over time also provide a platform for practical cooperation between ASEAN and its partners on key security issues, especially non-traditional and transnational challenges.
