India, China deadlocked over troops in key Himalayan area

Bloomberg

Chinese and Indian military commanders are deadlocked over the best way to pull back troops from a strategic area in the Himalayas, people familiar with the discussions said, raising the prospect for another tense winter along the border.
China insisted last week that India pull back thousands of reserve troops and weaponry it brought to the border last year, including in the high-altitude Depsang Plains, amid the worst violence between the nations in decades, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.
India rejected the request during the 13th round of talks to resolve the border standoff, and saw the demand as a setback after the two sides made steady progress in disengagement, the people said.
The Depsang Plains is split by the Line of Actual Control — a disputed but de facto boundary between India and China that runs along the Himalayas — and had previously been patrolled by both Indian and Chinese troops. China last year positioned troops at key location in the plains, denying India access to 300 square kilometers (116 square miles) of land ever since, the people said.
India wants to move soldiers away from all key disputed areas along its border with China, but not all the way back to their original bases, the people said. That’s because it’s difficult for India to put them back in place in the event of a conflict, as each solider must go through a three-stage acclimatization that lasts about a month. Chinese soldiers, by contrast, can retreat to high-altitude locations on the expansive Tibetan Plateau, the people said.
The Indian army and the Defense Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment on the details of the border talks. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian referred to a statement last week from Colonel Long Shaohua, a spokesman for the Western theater of the People’s Liberation Army.
The Chinese side “made great efforts” to calm tensions during talks between military officials at the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point in the Ladakh region, Long said in the statement. “But India still stuck to unreasonable and unrealistic demands, which added difficulties to the negotiation,” he said.
Beijing expressed concern with Indian Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh bordering Tibet on the same day as the 13th round of border talks, a move the China Daily called “provocative.”
“Given the current low level of mutual trust between the two sides, Beijing has a good reason to demand New Delhi stop taking any actions that may complicate the border issue and undermine bilateral ties,” the editorial said. Before the latest round of talks, China agreed to disengage from other friction points along the 2,167-mile (3,487-kilometer) border except for the Depsang Plains, officials said.