The planning for the exercise will be done at the next round
of annual defence consultative talks that the two sides will hold in
mid-December when they will also chalk out their bilateral exchanges and
interactions, a top Indian Army official told IANS here.
The
dates and the scope of the joint exercise will be chalked out during the
talks, which are essentially to finalise their year-long bilateral
programmes, he said.
If this exercise comes through, sometime
late next year, it will be the first such in four years. It will also be
the third such war game since the first bilateral exercise in Kunming
in China in December 2007.
The second 'Hand-in-Hand' exercise, as war gaming is called by the two sides, was held at Belgaum in Karnataka in December 2008.
Since
then, the joint exercise could not take place, first due to
celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China
in October 2009 and second due to the suspension of bilateral exchanges
by India after Lt. Gen B.S. Jaswal, its then Northern Army Commander of
troops in Jammu and Kashmir, was denied visa by China in mid-2010.
The
bilateral military exchanges resumed in April this year after Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Sanya in China for the Brazil,
Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) summit.
India then
sent its first military delegation to China in over a year when a team
led by then Jammu and Kashmir-based Rashtriya Rifles' Delta force
commander Major General Gurmeet Singh went to Beijing, Shanghai and
Urumqi in June this year.
The reciprocal visit by a Chinese
military delegation led by Lt.Gen. Lang Youliang from the Tibet Military
Command of Chengdu Military Region was in India for four days last
week.
The Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) delegation visited New
Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai when it got to see various establishments of
the Indian Army and held interactions with their counterparts.
"The
visit by the PLA delegation has put the defence exchanges between the
two countries back on track," was how the Chinese visit was described by
the Indian Army, as both sides during their meetings expressed the
desire to further promote bilateral defence exchanges and for continuing
peace and tranquillity between their troops on the borders.
Ahead
of the defence consultative talks, India and China will also hold their
14th round of border talks in New Delhi to carry forward the earlier
dialogues to resolve the long-pending boundary dispute.
Beijing's
special representative Dai Bingguo will lead the border talks
delegation that will meet with the National Security Advisor Shivshankar
Menon-led Indian delegation.
The border dialogue is the third
stage in the talks, which began in 2005 and constituted drawing up a
framework for dialogue in its second stage. The third stage will involve
both sides trying to implement the framework by arriving at an
agreement.
-GK/20111113/1300 |
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