UN urges avoiding action that would increase tensions on India-China border

TIL Desk/World/Beijing/ With President Donald Trump tweeting that the US is ready to “arbitrate” between India and China to end their “raging border dispute’, a UN spokesperson said it is not for the Secretary General to “opine’ who should mediate in the situation but urged that all parties involved should avoid any action that would increase tensions.

In a surprise move, US President Trump on Wednesday offered to “mediate or arbitrate” the raging border dispute between India and China, saying he was “ready, willing and able” to ease the tensions, amid the continuing standoff between the armies of the two Asian giants at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

“…That would be for the parties involved to decide who they would want to mediate this, not for us to opine. We’re, obviously, looking at the situation, and we would urge all the parties involved to avoid any action that would make the situation even more tense,” Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, said at the daily press briefing on Wednesday.

The nearly 3,500-km-long LAC is the de-facto border between India and China. Several areas along the LAC in Ladakh and North Sikkim have witnessed major military build-up by both the Indian and Chinese armies recently, in a clear signal of escalating tension and hardening of respective positions by the two sides even two weeks after they were engaged in two separate face-offs.