New Delhi: India seeks to increase efforts to resolve border issues with China, its top diplomat said on Thursday, as he met his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s summit in Kazakhstan.

The 10-member transregional economic and security body established by China and Russia, and comprising also Central Asian republics, India, Pakistan, Iran and Belarus, held a two-day meeting of its heads of state in the Kazakh capital Astana on July 3-4.

All countries were represented by their leaders and top diplomats, except for India, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped the summit. The Indian delegation was led by Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar.

Jaishankar and Chinese FM Wang Yi held talks on Thursday aiming to address the tensions that broke out between New Delhi and Beijing in 2020, following deadly clashes on their de facto Himalayan border known as the Line of Actual Control.

Both have since deployed thousands of troops to the area and downscaled engagements. Multiple talks aiming to resolve the standoff have not succeeded in normalizing the ties.

“Discussed early resolution of remaining issues in border areas. Agreed to redouble efforts through diplomatic and military channels to that end,” Jaishankar said in an X post after the meeting with Wang.

“The three mutuals — mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest — will guide our bilateral ties.”

The spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the ministers “agreed to work toward stability in the border area and hold a new round of consultations on the border issue as soon as possible.”

She quoted Wang as saying that both countries, as representatives of the Global South, should work together to “safeguard the common interests of developing countries, and make due contributions to regional and world peace, stability and development.”

India and China have been unable to agree on their 3,500-km border since they fought a war in 1962.

Jaishankar and Wang’s meeting was the first high-level engagement between the countries since India’s election and the start of Modi’s third term last month.

“In that context, it is important to note that primarily the discussion seems to have revolved around addressing the standoff,” said Manoj Kewalramani, China studies fellow and chairperson of the Indo-Pacific studies program at the Takshashila Institution in Bangalore.

“It is useful that the two foreign ministers met at the sidelines of the SCO summit. Maintaining channels of dialogue between the two sides is important. To that extent, it is good that this meeting took place.”

Kewalramani told Arab News that the presence of Chinese troops in the Ladakh area on the border was, however, posing a main obstacle to normalization.

“It does seem like Delhi will be unwilling to restore normalcy unless additional disengagement takes place. It would be strategically imprudent and politically difficult to do so,” he said.

“Unless there is a meaningful change in Chinese policies, it is very difficult for the Indian government to pursue normalization.”

MINSK: Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has freed at least 10 political prisoners, rights campaigners said on Thursday, including a veteran opposition figure suffering from cancer.
But the rare pardon still leaves some 1,400 people behind bars for political activity, most of them arrested after peaceful mass protests in 2020 and convicted on a range of charges related to alleged extremism.
Human rights group Viasna said it knew of three women and seven men who had been freed.
The only one named so far by relatives is Ryhor Kastusiou, 67, a former opposition party leader and presidential candidate. He was arrested in 2021 and sentenced the following year to 10 years in a penal colony after being convicted of plotting against the government to seize power. Following his arrest, he was diagnosed with cancer.
Activists said their happiness at the releases was bitter-sweet.
“This is a very great joy, of course, almost childlike. But it is joy through tears — there is anger too for what people have to go through,” said Inna Kovalenok, a representative of a relatives’ group that campaigns for the release of prisoners.
Andrei Stryzhak, head of an organization called Bysol that raises funds to support political prisoners and their families, said it was a delusion to think the authorities had become more humane.
“To believe that something has suddenly changed in the minds of those who torture, rape and kill for the sake of maintaining power is a dangerous fantasy bordering on treason and crime,” he posted on Telegram.
Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, this week announced an amnesty to mark the 80th anniversary of Belarus’s liberation from the Nazis in World War Two. State news agency Belta said it was expected to apply to about 7,850 prisoners including minors, pregnant women, pensioners and people suffering from tuberculosis or cancer.
Those convicted of crimes against the state or extremist and terrorist activities were excluded, but Lukashenko signalled there would be some exceptions for those who were seriously ill.
Lukashenko, in power since 1994, staged a violent crackdown in 2020 to suppress mass protests following an election that the opposition and Western governments said he had heavily rigged.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against him in that election and now leads the opposition in exile, welcomed the release of some prisoners but said more were still being detained.
“Political trials & arrests continue without a break in #Belarus,” Tsikhanouskaya posted on X. “Repression doesn’t stop for a day & we won’t stop our fight for freedom.”
Tsikhanouskaya’s husband Syarhei is among the best known prisoners, along with Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and Maria Kolesnikova, a protest leader who tore up her passport in September 2020 to thwart the security services from expelling her from the country by forcing her to cross into Ukraine.