Jaishankar will first meet Blinken, who arrived in New Delhi late Wednesday night after a visit to Central Asian states, at 11:30 a.m. at the Rashtrapati Bhavan Cultural Centre, the venue for the G20 meeting, people familiar with the matter said.
Immediately after the meeting with Blinken, Jaishankar is scheduled to meet Qin at noon, the people said. Qin, a close aide of President Xi Jinping, is on his first visit to India since replacing Wang Yi as foreign minister last year.
The meetings assume significance in view of the ongoing tensions between the US and China and the protracted military standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in the Ladakh sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After the brutal clash in the Galwan Valley in June 2020 that left 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers dead, relations between India and China are currently at their lowest point in six decades.
Blinken told reporters accompanying him that there were no plans for a meeting between him and his Russian and Chinese counterparts on the sidelines of the G20 meeting.
The meeting between Jaishankar and Blinken will be an opportunity to take stock of progress in bilateral relations and to discuss regional and international issues such as the Ukraine crisis and the situation in the Indo-Pacific. There have been several high-level contacts and visits between the two sides in recent weeks, including National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s visit to the US to launch the Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) initiative.
In the meeting with Qin, Jaishankar is expected to reiterate the Indian side’s stated position that only the release of frontline troops in the LAC and restoration of peace and tranquility in the border areas can lead to normalization of bilateral relations, the people said.
The Chinese side has called in recent months for border tensions to be brought to an “appropriate place” while the relationship moves forward in other areas such as trade.
After more than two dozen rounds of diplomatic and military negotiations, India and China withdrew their troops from the two banks of Pangong Lake, Gogra and Hot Springs. However, they have not been able to make progress on other key friction points such as Depsang and Demchok, due to growing indications that the Chinese side has stepped up the creation of military infrastructure and roads and bridges on its side of the LAC.
Jaishankar is expected to hold several more bilateral meetings on Thursday with counterparts from G20 countries and the nine guest countries attending the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting. This will include meetings with his counterparts from France and Germany.
