Jaishankar to meet Blinken, Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang

External affairs minister S Jaishankar is set to hold back-to-back bilateral meetings with US secretary of state Antony Blinken and Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang on the margins of the G20 foreign ministers meeting on Thursday.

Jaishankar will first meet Blinken, who arrived in New Delhi late on Wednesday night after a visit to Central Asian states, at 11.30am at the Rashtrapati Bhavan Cultural Centre, the venue of the G20 meeting, people familiar with the matter said.

Immediately after the meeting with Blinken, Jaishankar is scheduled to go into a meeting with Qin at noon, the people said. Qin, a close aide of President Xi Jinping, is on his first visit to India since he replaced Wang Yi as the foreign minister last year.

The meetings assume significance in view of continuing US-China tensions and the dragging military standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in the Ladakh sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). India-China relations are currently at their lowest point in six decades following the brutal clash at Galwan Valley in June 2020 that resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese troops.

Blinken told reporters accompanying him that there are no plans for meetings between him and his Russian and Chinese counterparts on the margins of the G20 meeting.

The meeting between Jaishankar and Blinken will be an opportunity to review progress in bilateral relations and to discuss regional and international issues such as the Ukraine crisis and the situation in the Indo-Pacific. There have been several high-level contacts and visits between the two sides in recent weeks, including National Security Adviser Ajit Doval’s visit to the US to launch the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET).

At the meeting with Qin, Jaishankar is expected to reiterate the Indian side’s stated position that only the disengagement of frontline troops on the LAC and the restoration of peace and tranquillity in the border areas can lead to the normalisation of bilateral relations, the people said.

The Chinese side, in recent months, has called for the border tensions to be put in an “appropriate place” while relations are taken forward in other areas such as trade.

India and China withdrew troops from the two banks of Pangong Lake, Gogra and Hot Springs after more than two dozen rounds of diplomatic and military talks. However, they have been unable to make progress in other crucial friction points such as Depsang and Demchok amid growing indications that the Chinese side has ramped up the creation of military infrastructure and roads and bridges on its side of the LAC.

Jaishankar is expected to hold several other bilateral meetings on Thursday with counterparts from G20 countries and the nine guest countries attending the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting. This will include meetings with his counterparts from France and Germany.