India and China are likely to sign Border Defence Co-operation Agreement (BDCA) during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Beijing next week. This pact seeks to prevent face-offs between the armies of two countries at the line of Actual Control (lAC) as witnessed in April this year in ladakh.
The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) will discuss the border pact on Thursday before Singh embarks on his visit to China and Russia from October 20-22. The Prime Minister will first visit Russia and then Beijing.
Singh will meet his Chinese counterpart li Keqiang and discuss bilateral, regional and global issues with a view to strengthening the partnership between the two countries. Singh will also meet President Xi Jinping and National People’s Congress Chairman Zhang Dejiang, officials said here on Wednesday.
As regards the border pact, sources said there are still certain differences over the modalities of some of the new confidence building measures agreed upon between the two sides including a hotline to be established between the two militaries.
The two sides have agreed upon setting up the hotline between the two militaries but so far, there is no agreement over the officers who would talk to each other from either side.
India had proposed a hotline between the Director Generals of Military Operations but the Chinese side is understood to have conveyed that they do not have any such designation in their Army.
This proposal was on the lines of a hotline between India and Pakistan wherein the DGMOs of two armies talk to each other every week on Tuesday. The schedule can be altered if there is anything urgent like when the Indian side lodged strong protest over the beheading of its soldier on the line of Control (loC) in January this year.
India and China held several discussions on the proposed border agreement in the past but the urgency to sign it gathered momentum after incursion by Chinese troops into Depsang Valley in ladakh in April. The resultant face-off between the two armies lasted more than 25 days and tension was defused following intervention at the highest diplomatic level. The border pact came up for discussion during Defence Minister A K Antony’s recent visit to China and the two countries then agreed to conclude negotiations on the pact at an early date.
The two countries agreed on several confidence building measures, including greater frequency of meetings of military officers of both sides along the lAC and increased exchange of visits of both young and senior armed forces officials.
They also agreed to hold their Army-to-Army exercise next month in China’s Chengdu military region after a gap of three years. The two armies have held such joint exercise two times in India and China respectively.