Amid LAC thaw, PM Modi to hold bilateral meeting with Xi Jinping today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet on the margins of the Brics Summit in Russia on Wednesday, foreign secretary Vikram Misri said on Tuesday in the wake of the two sides reaching an agreement on patrolling along their disputed border.

The agreement on patrolling arrangements on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), announced by the Indian side on Monday, had raised the possibility of the first formal interaction between Modi and Xi since their brief encounter on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali in November 2022.

“I can confirm that there will be a bilateral meeting held between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping tomorrow [Wednesday] on the sidelines of the Brics Summit,” Misri told a media briefing in the Russian city of Kazan. He declined to give details or to preview the outcomes of the meeting.

The two leaders last had a structured meeting during their second informal summit in Mamalllapuram in October 2019, months before start of the border standoff.

Modi and Xi, who arrived in Kazan on Tuesday, are set to meet between two plenary sessions of the Brics Summit on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.

The agreement on patrolling along the LAC was the outcome of several rounds of diplomatic and military talks between India and China. It also followed a string of meetings of senior leaders of the two sides in recent months – external affairs minister S Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Kazakhstan on July 4 and on the sidelines of Asean-related meetings in Laos on July 25, while National Security Adviser Ajit Doval met Wang during a Brics-related meeting in St Petersburg on September 12.

Wednesday’s meeting is expected to focus on modalities for de-escalation and de-induction of troops by both sides to peacetime positions, the people said. India and China have deployed some 60,000 troops each along the LAC since the start of the standoff.