New Delhi, July 25: China's foreign minister Wang Yi today asked India to "conscientiously" withdraw its troops from a stand-off on a plateau near their tri-junction with Bhutan, adding to growing public pressure from Beijing two days before India's national security adviser travels there.
Wang, a seasoned diplomat not associated with provocative rhetoric, said India had admitted that its troops had crossed its borders, and then said the Indian forces were in Chinese territory. New Delhi insists its troops stand in Bhutanese terrain.
China and Bhutan both claim the plateau Beijing calls Donglang, Thimphu Doklam and New Delhi Doko La. The two Asian giants have been locked in a face-off since June 16 - their longest such border spat since the 1980s.
"The rights and wrongs are crystal clear and even senior Indian officials have openly stated that Chinese troops did not enter into the Indian boundary, which is to say, India has admitted it crossed into the Chinese territory," the Chinese foreign ministry quoted Wang as saying. "The problem has a simple solution. Indian troops should conscientiously pull out."
Indian officials have never accepted that the country's troops entered Chinese territory - instead, New Delhi has insisted the troops are in Bhutanese territory.
Wang's comments, his first on the current crisis, follow a day after China's defence ministry asked India not to entertain "unrealistic illusions" regarding the stand-off and to withdraw its troops from the plateau as a precondition for any talks.
Indian officials said the government was viewing Wang's comments today and those by the Chinese defence ministry yesterday as part of psychological pressure aimed at setting the tone for a possible meeting between NSA Ajit Doval and his counterpart Yang Jiechi later this week.
Still, they saw in Wang's comments less of the aggressive rhetoric than was evident in the Chinese defence ministry's media briefing yesterday.
Doval will fly to Beijing on July 27 for a two-day meeting of the NSAs of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) grouping. The BRICS will hold their annual meeting in the eastern China city of Xiamen in early September, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to attend.
China's foreign ministry had yesterday formally announced the meeting of the BRICS NSAs.
Asked about a bilateral meeting between Doval and Yang, also the special representatives of their two countries for the India-China border dispute, the foreign ministry in Beijing had tried to avoid any firm answer.
But it did say that such bilateral meetings on the margins of the BRICS talks were the practice, leaving open the possibility of a meeting between Doval and Yang on the spat.
India has repeatedly said it hoped for a diplomatic resolution to the stand-off.
