EXTERNAL AFFAIRS Minister S Jaishankar met the newly appointed Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting Thursday, and described as “abnormal” the current state of the bilateral relationship as they discussed the ongoing border stand-off. Responding to questions later, Jaishankar said this was their first meeting since Qin took charge as China's Foreign Minister. He said the “bulk of our conversation” during the 45-minute meeting was about the “current state of our relationship,” which is “abnormal”. “Those are the adjectives I used in that meeting,” he said. Jaishankar said there are “real problems” and the two sides “need to talk about it openly and candidly”. He said the “thrust of the meeting” was on bilateral ties and the challenges confronting it, including “peace and tranquillity in the border areas”. Qin arrived in Delhi Thursday morning to attend the G20 meeting hosted by India under its presidency of the grouping. “Met Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on sidelines of #G20FMM this afternoon. Our discussions were focused on addressing current challenges to the bilateral relationship, especially peace and tranquillity in the border areas,” Jaishankar posted on Twitter. “We also spoke about the G20 agenda,” he said. Jaishankar had used the term “abnormal” earlier, too, to describe the border situation during a meeting with then Chinese Foreign minister Wang Yi. Thursday's meeting with Qin and Jaishankar's remarks came days after India’s top official dealing with China in the Ministry of External Affairs travelled to Beijing and held the 26th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs - marking the first such onsite meeting since the border stand-off began in 2020. India has maintained that the border stand-off has impacted bilateral ties, and there cannot be a business-as-usual interaction till disengagement and wider de-escalation take place. More than 1 lakh troops are stationed on either side of the India-China border. With India holding the Presidency of both G-20 and Shanghai Cooperation Organisa-tion (SCO), Chinese President Xi Jinping has at least two opportunities to visit the country — the SCO summit is likely to be held in June-July and the G-20 summit is scheduled for September.
