NEW DELHI: The Galwan clash last year in which a number of lives were lost took the Sino-Indian bilateral ties in a completely different direction, foreign minister S Jaishankar said on Monday.
Delivering virtually the JG Crawford Oration 2021 at the Australian National University, Jaishankar also said that in a departure from the past, there was a very large presence of Chinese troops at the border in an operational mode without a good reason.
“The very serious clash in June last year, in which a lot of lives were lost, took the relationship in a completely different direction. In India, the challenge of how to manage our relationship with China ranks very high,” Jaishankar was quoted as saying by ANI.
The remarks were made while replying to queries after his lecture that saw him asserting that resistance to reforming international organisations “compels us to look for practical and immediate solutions”. That is the case for Quad, he said. He said Quad nations strongly subscribe to the centrality of ASEAN in so far as the Indo-Pacific.