Talks between India and China are yet to make any significant progress to end a standoff on a disputed section of the Himalayan border, India’s defence minister Rajnath Singh said as thousands of troops are facing freezing weather in the mountains, Reuters informed.
Singh said there had been “no meaningful result” from several rounds of diplomatic and military talks aimed at de-escalating the worst border confrontation between the nuclear armed neighbours, who fought a border war in 1962, in decades.
“If the status quo continues, it is obvious that the deployment won’t come down,” Singh said during an interview with Reuters partner ANI.
Tensions escalated in June after troops clashed in the Galwan valley in Ladakh, killing twenty Indian soldiers while China suffered an undisclosed number of casualties. Both India and China ramped up their military presence in the the high-altitude desert region.
India has moved around 50,000 troops in the problematic area, some at altitudes of over 4572 m, where scarce oxygen and freezing winter temperatures can be life-threatening.
India and China share an undemarcated 3,800-km long border, where their troops previously adhered to long-standing protocols to avoid the use of any firearms on the frontier. But tensions escalated since the Galwan incident and both militaries accused each other of firing in the air in September.