NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s prime minister and China’s chief agreed Thursday to accentuate efforts to de-escalate tensions on the disputed border between them and convey residence 1000’s of their troops deployed there, in line with an official from India’s international ministry.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of a Johannesburg summit the place the BRICS bloc of developing economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — invited six different international locations to hitch the group, together with Saudi Arabia and Iran. ,

India’s Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra instructed Indian reporters that Modi, in an impromptu assembly with Xi, highlighted India’s issues about their unresolved border points.

The disputed boundary has led to a three-year standoff between tens of 1000’s of Indian and Chinese troopers within the Ladakh space. A conflict three years in the past within the area killed 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese.

Kwatra stated the 2 leaders agreed to accentuate efforts however didn’t say something about what Xi’s response could have been to Modi’s expressed issues or elaborate on particulars of what the Indian prime minister stated. There was no quick remark from the Chinese facet.

Indian and Chinese army commanders had met final week in an obvious effort to stabilize the scenario. A Line of Actual Control separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh within the west to India’s jap state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety.

India and China had fought a conflict over their border in 1962. China claims some 90,000 sq. kilometers (35,000 sq. miles) of territory in India’s northeast, together with Arunachal Pradesh with its primarily Buddhist inhabitants.

India says China occupies 38,000 sq. kilometers (15,000 sq. miles) of its territory within the Aksai Chin Plateau, which India considers a part of Ladakh, the place the present faceoff is going on.