India says trust with China 'profoundly disturbed', US ties on upswing

Both sides have deployed heavily in the contested area, and the escalation poses the most serious military crisis between the nuclear-armed neighbours for decades.

External affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Tuesday that trust with China had been deeply impaired after last summer’s border clash which resulted in the first combat deaths in 45 years.
 
Ties with the United States, on the other hand, were converging and were likely to expand under the new administration in Washington, Jaishankar told the Reuters Next conference.
 
Tensions with China erupted in June, when 20 Indian soldiers were killed in brutal hand-to-hand fighting, while China suffered an unspecified number of casualties in the clash on a disputed section of the border in the western Himalayas.