India, China working to restore trust: Army Chief

New Delhi: Chief of Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi on Tuesday gave a cautious reaction to the agreement between India and China on restoration of patrolling along LAC and said, “We are trying to restore the trust and convince each other that no side will creep into the buffer zones which have been created,” while adding once trust is restored between the two sides, other stages like de-escalation will follow.

“What had happened, we are trying to restore the trust. How the trust will get restored? It will get restored once we are able to see each other, and we are able to convince each other that look the buffer zones which are there, which have been created, we are not creeping. And both have to reassure each other. Patrolling gives you that kind of advantage. As we restore the trust, other stages will also follow through soon,” Gen. Dwivedi said.

He said that it had always been India’s stand that status quo of April 2020 had to be restored. “As far as we are concerned, we were looking at that, we want to go back to the status quo of April 2020. Thereafter, we will be looking at disengagement, de-escalation and normal management of Line of Actual Control (LAC). And, this normal management of the LAC will not just start there. There are phases in that also,” the Army chief said.

Foreign secretary Vikram Misri had on Monday said that the agreement was finalised following negotiations by the two sides over the last several weeks and that it will lead to a resolution of the issues that had arisen in 2020.

External affairs minister S. Jaishankar said that Indian and Chinese soldiers will be able to resume patrolling in the way they had been doing before the border face-off began and the disengagement process with China had been completed.