Modi, Xi vow to build trust, safeguard peace at border
ALL IS WELL Held fruitful talks on bilateral relations between India, China, Prime Minister tweets after talks with Jinping
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday tried to put the Doklam standoff behind as they agreed to strengthen cooperation between defence personnel to avoid a repeat of the border row.
The two leaders said more needed to be done to avoid boundary disputes and peace in border areas was vital to a positive relationship, India’s foreign secretary S Jaishankar told media after more than an hour-long meeting between Modi and Xi.
“One of the important points made during the meeting was that peace and tranquility on the border areas was a prerequisite for the further development of our relationship,” Jaishankar said.
The leaders also emphasised on enhancing and strengthening mutual trust, India’s top diplomat said of the meeting that came a week after the two countries ended a 73-day tense standoff in Doklam close to India’s northeaster frontier.
Jaishankar didn’t specifically mention Doklam but gave enough hints that much of the conversation was in the backdrop of the military impasse that was resolved a few days before Modi’s visit to Xiamen for Brics summit that concluded Monday.
“It is natural that between neighbours and large powers there would be areas of difference. But where there is an area of difference, it should be handled with mutual respect and efforts should be made to find common ground,” he said.
The two sides agreed that Chinese and Indian defence and security personnel must maintain strong contacts and cooperation and ensure “that the sort of situations which happened recently does not re-occur”, Jaishankar said. The row in Doklam, a Himalayan plateau claimed by both China and Bhutan, was sparked when the Chinese tried to build a road.
India sent soldiers to stop China from working on the road that would have closed in on the Silliguri corridor, a narrow stretch that connects mainland India to the northeast.
Jaishankar didn’t mention the steps that would be taken to prevent another Doklam, which occurred despite a mechanism being in place to tackle incidents along the 3,800-km mountainous frontier, large parts of which are disputed. The conversation between the two leaders was “forward looking”.
“Both of us know what happened. This (the conversation) was not a backwards looking conversations, this was a forward looking conversation,” Jaishankar said.
The discussion was about ways to take the relationship forward, ensure peace in border areas and build mutual trust, he said.
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A government panel has found that most deliveries in the Banswara district hospital, where 81 neo-natal died in last two months, were conducted by the nursing staff and not gynecologists, and the cloth used to clean the babies was not sterilised.
The government had suspended three doctors and five others for negligence after the panel submitted the report to health minister Kali Charan Saraf on Monday. Displinary action including imposing penalty has been initiated against three doctors and four nursing staff.
The report accessed by HT said that normal deliveries were being done by the nursing staff while the doctors only performed caesarean sections. Of the eight nursing staff only two were skilled birth attendants, the report said.
The panel said the cloth used to clean newborns was not sterlised, leading to infection. “Still birth ratio was 73/1000 live births that shows lack of quality services at labour room,” the report said.
The panel also found that in some cases oxytocin was given for early delivery even though it should be done in extreme cases .
The panel also found that most mothers who delivered still born children were child brides and extremely malnourished.
The government had set up a four-member committee, headed by Dr SM Mittal, on August 31 to probe at the state-run Mahatma Gandhi District Hospital until August 31.
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