United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hopes “good neighbourly relations” between India and China will be strengthened following their agreement on border de-escalation, his Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Tuesday.“We certainly welcome any positive engagement between the nations of China and India, and we hope that process of good neighborly relations will be strengthened”, he said.

Asia's two large neighbours reached an agreement on patrolling along the nearly 3,500-kilometre Line of Actual Control to end the four-year-long border confrontation that led to a fatal clash.

The agreement was announced ahead of the BRICS summit in Kazan in Russia that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping are attending. Guterres will also be at the summit of BRICS, named for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

The group representing the five major non-Western economies has since expanded by six more countries - Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE 

India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said on Monday, “An agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the India-China border areas, leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020”. 

China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian confirmed the agreement, “which China views favorably”.

“Going forward, the Chinese side and Indian side will implement those resolutions”, he added.

In the Galwan Valley area along the LAC, Indian and Chinese troops clashed in June 2020 armed with makeshift weapons in a zone where firearms are prohibited by mutual agreement.

About 20 Indian soldiers and several Chinese troops died in the encounter.

Since then the two sides have been in a tense standoff that the agreement reached after intense negotiations hoped to de-escalate.

(The writer is a New York-based Indian journalist and Nonresident Fellow, Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi. Views are personal. He can be reached at arulouis@yahoo.com)