By IANS
Beijing : India and China Tuesday decided to hold border talks here Sep 24-26 even as New Delhi sought Beijing’s support in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for the Indo-US nuclear deal.
The 11th round of the talks will be led by the Special Representatives – National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan of India and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu announced.
The talks seek to resolve their decades-old border dispute that sparked a major war in 1962.
The announcement was made on a day Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon called on Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan and discussed a broad array of bilateral and regional issues, including the boundary row.
“The discussions covered further steps to improve and consolidate their bilateral relations, regional and international issues. The discussions were positive, constructive and fruitful,” the Indian external affairs ministry said in a statement after Menon’s talks with Chinese leaders and officials.
Menon, who began a two-day visit to China Monday, also discussed the broad contours of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s forthcoming visit to Beijing, which is expected to take place towards the end of the year.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi is likely to visit China next month.
Speaking about the boundary dispute, the Chinese spokesperson said: “China will make efforts with India to seek a fair and reasonable solution acceptable to the two parties according to the relevant principles in this regard.”
Menon, a seasoned China hand who served as India’s envoy to Beijing in 2000-03, deployed his diplomatic skills to convince the Chinese leadership about the merits of the India-US civil nuclear deal and underlined India’s impeccable non-proliferation credentials to win Beijing’s support in the NSG.
Winning the support of China, which has been critical about the India-US nuclear deal, could be crucial to India’s efforts to push the path-breaking agreement through the NSG that will reopen doors of global civil nuclear commerce for New Delhi after a gap of three decades.
Chinese leaders raised issues relating to the implications of the nuclear deal on global nuclear non-proliferation efforts but added that they would first need to see New Delhi’s safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) before taking a stand in NSG.
The political establishment in Beijing is actively debating the India-US nuclear deal and wants a similar arrangement for its long-time ally Pakistan. Beijing says that exceptions like the one the US has made for India should be made “not on the basis of countries but on the basis of certain criteria”.
The Chinese foreign minister had hinted last month that Beijing was prepared to explore possibilities of cooperation with India in the area of peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
Some China watchers say that despite conflicting signals, Beijing may not block the India-US nuclear deal and risk alienating another rising Asian power with which it is developing “strategic” partnership.
Menon tried to explain India’s position on the quadrilateral dialogue forum comprising India, the US, Japan and Australia — which China fears is directed against its interests.
The Indian diplomat also assured Beijing that the recent multilateral naval exercise involving the navies of India, the US, Japan, Australia and Singapore in the Bay of Bengal were meant to improve cooperation between these countries to address issues of maritime security and piracy.
While speaking on India’s Look East policy in Bangkok, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee this week ruled out any rivalry between India and China and stressed that the two countries hold the key to an emerging Asian century.