NEW DELHI/BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed on Wednesday to boost communication and cooperation between their countries and resolve conflicts to help improve ties that were damaged by a deadly military clash in 2020.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia for their first formal talks in five years, signalling that ties between the Asian giants have begun to recover from the diplomatic rift caused by the clash along their disputed Himalayan frontier.
India and China, two of the world’s biggest economies, have maintained strong trade ties despite the military and diplomatic tensions. The rapprochement is expected to boost Chinese investment in India.
India said the two leaders have directed their officials to take further steps to stabilise all aspects of bilateral ties.
The Xi-Modi meeting in the city of Kazan came two days after New Delhi said it had reached a deal with Beijing to resolve the four-year military stand-off in the Himalayan region of Ladakh, although neither side has shared details of the pact.
The two sides should strengthen communication and cooperation, resolve conflicts and differences, and realize each other’s development dreams, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported Xi as telling Modi.
Modi put forward ideas for improving and developing bilateral relations, to which Xi agreed in principle, CCTV added without elaborating.
In response, Modi told Xi that peace, stability, mutual trust and respect were crucial for relations.
“We welcome the agreement on the issues that had come up over the last four years,” Modi told Xi in comments aired on India’s state broadcaster Doordarshan.
“It should be our priority to maintain peace and tranquillity on the border. Mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual sensitivity should be the basis of our relationship,” Modi said.
Relations between the world’s two most populous nations - both nuclear powers - have been strained since a clash between their troops on the largely undemarcated frontier in the western Himalayas left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead in 2020.
The neighbours have added tens of thousands of troops and weapons along the icy frontier over the last four years.
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