India-China Border stand-off: Commanders meet amid calls for boycott of Chinese goods
Indian and Chinese military commanders met to try to ease tensions at their disputed Himalayan border as the public mood hardened in India for a military and economic riposte following the worst clash in more than five decades.
Major Indian traders called for a boycott of Chinese goods and the state of Maharashtra, home to India's financial capital of Mumbai, put three initial investment proposals from Chinese companies worth 50 billion rupees ($658 million) on hold, just days after signing the agreements.
India said 20 of its soldiers were killed in a clash last Monday with Chinese troops in a major escalation of a weeks-long standoff between the nuclear-armed Asian giants. China has not disclosed how many casualties it suffered.
An Indian government source said commanders met in Moldo, on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control, the de facto border dividing India's Ladakh region from the Chinese held Aksai Chin.
The meeting lasted several hours, with the Indian side pushing China to withdraw its troops back to where they were in April, a second Indian government source said. China, in previous rounds of talks, had asked India to stop all construction work in what it says is Chinese territory.
Meanwhile, the war of words between India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and main opposition Congress over the military standoff escalated yesterday, reported our New Delhi correspondent.
In his first remarks, former PM Manmohan Singh yesterday said PM Narendra Modi "must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position."
Congress has been attacking the government on Modi's remarks at an all-party meeting that no one has entered Indian territory or captured any military post while referring to the eastern Ladakh standoff.
In a sharp push-back at Singh, BJP President J P Nadda alleged Singh, as PM, "abjectly surrendered" hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China and presided over 600 incursions made by the neighbouring country between 2010 and 2013.