Split shows after Modi-Xi talks

Charu Sudan Kasturi, TT,  New Delhi, Sept. 5: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping today promised to together try to avoid a repeat of the 10-week Doklam standoff, but deep differences over that crisis spilled out amid the efforts to resurrect a battered relationship.

Flanked by their national security and foreign policy teams, Modi and Xi met for a little over an hour this morning in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen just before the Indian left for a visit to Myanmar.

Their meeting, the first between the leaders of the two most populous nations since the standoff on the Doklam plateau ended last week, lasted more than twice the scheduled time, officials said.

But the meeting quickly turned into a tense and delicate diplomatic exercise. Both sides avoided a direct blame game, yet revealed the mutual mistrust that had exploded in Doklam, senior officials told The Telegraph.

Modi and Xi agreed to enhance coordination between the two countries' border troops to minimise the risk of a repeat of the physical violence that had marked the start of the standoff and was repeated in Ladakh in a separate incident.

But unlike with past border standoffs, both sides avoided suggesting that the resolution to the latest crisis reflected the maturity of their relationship. Instead, each subtly pointed to what the other could do differently to avoid a repeat.

"It is natural that between neighbours and large powers there will be areas of difference," foreign secretary S. Jaishankar said after the Modi-Xi meeting.

"But where there are areas of differences, they should be dealt with mutual respect and efforts should be made to find common ground to address those areas."

Barely two hours after Jaishankar's oblique allusion to China's threatening tone towards India during the standoff - peppered with reminders of the 1962 war and a racist state media video - Beijing suggested that New Delhi's insecurities were complicating relations.

"We hope India can adopt a correct and rational view of China's development," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said.

The reminders of the tense standoff that folded up just on the eve of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (Brics) summit, which Modi attended in Xiamen, underscored the deep challenges New Delhi and Beijing face in returning to managing their relationship well.

The Doklam standoff was their longest in recent times and the parallel exchange of punches and kicks between their soldiers in Ladakh revealed the heightened tensions that have crept in along a border where neither side has fired a bullet in 50 years.

Jaishankar said that during the meeting with Xi today, Modi had called peace and tranquillity along the undecided India-China border a "prerequisite" for bilateral relations to grow.

Xi told Modi that the two sides "should seek common ground while setting aside differences, and safeguard the peace and tranquillity of border areas", according to Geng -- an account confirmed by Indian officials.

The emphasis on peace along the border highlighted how close the two countries had come to a breakdown in a three-decade-old consensus to avoid a military conflict that can derail their burgeoning economies.

"Both sides need to recognise that they cannot take peace along the border for granted," Zorawar Daulet Singh, a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, had told this newspaper last week. "They need to demonstrate greater responsibility."