ISLAMABAD ( MEDIA REPORT )
Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi who was scheduled to visit New Delhi on September 9-10 for the boundary talks with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, has cancelled his, a source privy to the development told India Today TV.
The source said the Indian side had some “scheduling constraints” and wanted the meeting to be rescheduled.
Doval and Wang are the designated special representatives (SRs) for boundary talks between India and China. The meeting is likely to be rescheduled at a mutually convenient date.
Meanwhile, Wang Yi will be landing in Islamabad on Saturday for the Pakistan-Afghanistan-China trilateral meeting and on Sunday he would be in Kathmandu, Nepal.
India and China have had a long boundary dispute over the 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) leading to over 20 rounds of talks within the SR framework.
The Modi government’s recent decision to remove J&K’s special status and change the status of Ladakh has not gone down well with Beijing.
Last month, India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar visited China and held bilateral talks with Wang Yi explaining that the recent decision would not lead to India raising any additional territorial claims in the Aksi Chin area and that the Chinese concerns in this regard were misplaced.
“The issue (Aksai Chin) came up in terms of when they were referring to what they thought the impact of Article 370 was going to be and how it could impact India-China boundary talks. I told them that it does not change the international boundaries or the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China and the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan. I conveyed our position to him which was that we maintain our international boundary according to our map,” Jaishankar had said.
Both the ministers had also discussed the modalities for the second round of ‘informal summit’ between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The two leaders held their first informal summit in April last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan ending the tensions of the 73-day military stand-off in Doklam.
While India is preparing to host the Chinese President in the beach city of Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu on October 11-13, there are reports of India’s Northern Army Commander Lt. General Ranbir Singh postponing his visit to China, to monitor the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.
There have been instances in the past when Presidential visits have overlapped with skirmishes at the border.