Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe are holding talks in New Delhi today. Removing distrust and boost coordination between the armies of the two neighbours are high on their agenda. Mr Wei arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday on a four-day visit to India. His visit comes nearly three-and-half months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed that strategic communication between the two armies should be enhanced to avoid Doklam-like standoffs.
Chinese defence minister met Prime Minister on Tuesday during which Mr Modi said both the countries are handling their differences with sensitivity and maturity by not allowing them to become disputes.
Our corrrespondent quoting official sources repots, the primary objective of Mr Wei’s visit is to deliberate with Indian defence establishment on implementation of decisions taken by Mr Modi and Mr Xi during the informal summit in Wuhan in April.
In the delegation level talks, the Indian side is likely to raise the issue of presence of sizeable number of Chinese troops in North Doklam. The two sides are likely to deliberate on a mechanism under which troops from both sides will inform each other before carrying out any patrolling on the disputed areas along the nearly 4,000-km border.
Both sides will also attempt to resolve differences in setting up of a hotline between the armies of the two countries. After the Wuhan summit, both sides revived the long-pending proposal to set up the hotline so as to avoid flare-ups along the disputed border. But, the initiative hit roadblocks over differences on issues relating to protocol and technical aspect of the hotline.
