(Bloomberg) -- China and India withdrew troops from the remaining two friction points on their disputed Himalayan border, ending a four-year stalemate that soured relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
The two sides will start coordinated patrolling of the border outpost with limited number of troops once military commanders decide on the modalities, a senior Indian official said Wednesday, asking not to be identified as the discussions are private.
Soldiers on both sides exchanged traditional Indian sweets on Thursday to mark the Hindu festival of Diwali, a long-standing convention that was halted over the past four years because of the border tensions. The gesture was a way to rebuild confidence, the official said.
China and India struck an agreement last week to end a four-year impasse triggered by border clashes in June 2020 that left 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers dead. After the skirmishes, the two countries had built up thousands of troops, missiles and fighter jets along parts of the 3,488 kilometer (2,167 mile) unmarked border.
China’s President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held their first delegation-level bilateral meeting a few days after the border accord, raising expectations that ties would normalize. Indian officials, however, have signaled they’ll move cautiously to ease investment and business restrictions on Chinese firms.
A spokesman for the Indian Army declined to comment on the withdrawal of troops. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Wednesday that the two countries’ militaries “are implementing the resolutions in an orderly way.”
(Updates with soldiers on both sides meeting.)
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