President Xi And PM Modi Agree To Intensify Efforts To Relax Problems At China-India Border

India's border with China in Nathula. (Wikimedia Commons/Indrajit Das)

JAKARTA - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to step up efforts to reduce tensions on the border of the two countries, which have been going on since three years ago when there were deadly clashes.

The talks between the two leaders were held on the sidelines of the BRICS 15th Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, Indian Foreign Minister Vinay Kwatra said.

The border dispute has long been the source of a dispute between New Delhi and Beijing, which later expanded into the 1962 war that ended in China's victory.

In the following years, an obscure de facto border called the Actual Control Line (LAC) has separated the two nuclear powers.

"(PM Modi) underlines, maintaining peace and calm in border areas, and observing and respecting LAC is essential for normalizing Indian-Chinese relations," Minister Kwatra said.

In a statement on Friday, China's Foreign Ministry said the two leaders "had an honest and in-depth exchange of views on China-India relations as well as other interests."

"President Xi stressed that improving Chinese-India relations will be beneficial for the common interests of the two countries and the community," explained the ministry.

"Both parties must remember the interests of their overall bilateral relations, handle border issues well so that they can jointly maintain peace and peace in border areas," the ministry continued in a statement.

The meeting was held a week after India and China conducted a 19th round of negotiations to resolve their border problems.

"Both parties held positive, constructive, and in-depth discussions on solving the remaining problems along the LAC in the Western Sector," the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

Earlier, President Xi and PM Modi attended a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Uzbekistan in September last year, but were not involved in any diplomatic meetings.

A few weeks later, the two had a brief conversation on the sidelines of a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) in Bali, Indonesia.

It is known that tensions over the past three years have deteriorated after deadly clashes in Aksai Chin-Ladakh in 2020, escalated in December when fighting between troops from both sides in the Tawang sector in India's northeastern Arunachal Pradesh region resulted in injuries to both sides.