By IANS
Beijing : Ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Beijing later this year, special representatives of India and China Monday kicked off another round of talks here to resolve the contentious boundary dispute that has hobbled their bilateral ties for over four decades.
National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan, India’s special representative, met China’s Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo, Beijing’s chief interlocutor on the boundary dispute, and held informal discussions. The two-day talks will begin Tuesday.
The in-camera talks are aimed at finalising an agreed framework – a euphemism for a package settlement that may involve mutual territorial adjustments – to resolve the dispute that has cast a shadow over their bilateral ties since a brief but brutal war between the two Asian countries in 1962.
Manmohan Singh is likely to visit Beijing towards the end of the year.
India hosted the last round of talks in the picturesque southern hill station of Coonoor early this year, which ended without any significant progress.
“I believe that as long as the two sides demonstrate sincerity and patience and uphold the principles of mutual respect, mutual benefit and mutual understanding, we are bound to find solutions to this issue. Both China and India value universal love and harmony,” Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said recently.
The two rising Asian powers are keen to put the boundary dispute behind them so that they can concentrate on expanding economic and strategic ties even as trust deficit continues to exist between them.
India’s bilateral trade with China has already exceeded $30 billion, and if it continues at this pace Beijing will soon overtake Washington as New Delhi’s leading trade partner.
But even as both sides hold talks in accordance with guiding principles and political parameters finalised during Wen’s India visit in 2005, there is very little likelihood of a breakthrough to the boundary dispute in near future. A resolution of the dispute that may involve territorial swap is sure to whip up nationalistic emotions on both sides of the border.
During Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to India in November last year, the two Asian countries declared the settlement of the boundary question as the “strategic objective” of their bilateral ties.
India claims China is illegally occupying 43,180 sq km of Jammu and Kashmir, including 5,180 sq km Islamabad illegally ceded to Beijing under the Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement in 1963. China lays claim to 90,000 sq km of Indian territory, most of it in the northeastern state Arunachal Pradesh.