On a day marked by high-level diplomacy, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Foreign Minister and Special Representative Wang Yi on the sidelines of the BRICS NSAs meeting in St. Petersburg on Thursday (September 12, 2024), discussing the way forward on the Russia-Ukraine conflict as well as military disengagement on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China with “urgency”, with them respectively.
Mr. Doval began his meeting with the Russian President by telling him about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Kyiv and meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on August 23. The talks are significant as calls have increased from other countries in Europe calling for India to step up efforts at a peace process. Thus far, Indian officials have not made a structured peace proposal or offered explicitly to host a summit but have said India is happy to convey messages between the two leaders in the absence of direct talks, and support efforts to de-escalate the conflict. Mr. Modi and Mr. Zelenskyy will be in New York for the UN Summit of the Future later this month, and officials said the leaders could hold another meeting there.
“Prime Minister [Modi] wanted me to come specially and personally to brief you about the talks [held in Ukraine]. The talks were held in a very closed format… and I was one of the [officials] attending the meeting,” Mr. Doval said, in comments that were broadcast on official media, also confirming that Mr. Modi will attend the BRICS summit to be held in Kazan on October 22-24.
Mr. Putin “stressed the importance of security issues in bilateral relations”, an official readout from the Kremlin said, adding that the Russian President thanked India for “maintaining dialogue in this area”.
Mr. Putin also proposed a bilateral meeting with Mr. Modi on October 22, on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, in which the two leaders would speak about the implementation of agreements, mainly on trade and economics, that were signed during Mr. Modi’s last visit to Moscow in July.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Doval attended the BRICS NSA meeting that was addressed by Mr. Putin, at the Konstantinovsky Palace in St. Petersburg, and met with China’s top diplomat and senior Chinese Communist party Politburo member Mr. Wang Yi. The resolution of the four-year military stand-off at the LAC was at the top of the agenda during the meeting, which follows a number of India-China engagements in quick succession, including two meetings between Mr. Wang and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in Astana and Vientiane and two meetings of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India–China Border Affairs (WMCC) officials in Beijing and Delhi. While neither side confirmed this, the Doval-Wang meeting is also understood to have discussed the possibility of a meeting between Mr. Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kazan next month.
“Both sides agreed to work with urgency and redouble their efforts to realise complete disengagement in the remaining areas. The NSA conveyed that peace and tranquillity in border areas and respect for LAC are essential for normalcy in bilateral relations,” the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement following the meeting. “The two sides agreed that the India-China bilateral relationship is significant not just for the two countries but also for the region and the world.”
On Thursday, External Affairs Minister Mr. Jaishankar told an audience in Geneva that “75%” of the military disengagement between Indian and Chinese forces had already been completed, and that if forces stepped back from the stand-off points along the LAC, and “peace and tranquility is maintained”, then India and China could look at “other possibilities” in resuming normal ties.
Published - September 12, 2024 09:40 pm IST
