NEW DELHI, Jan. 4 APP: Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India was not expecting any dramatic turnaround on the boundary issue with China during the forthcoming visit of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Beijing.
However, he said negotiations with China were moving in the “right direction” on the issue.
In an interview with editors of Indian news agency PTI, he said negotiations were continuing between Special Representatives of the two countries on the boundary problem, but he indicated “there is still some distance to go before resolving it.”
“The visit is expected to be successful. But if you are expecting that there would be any dramatic turnaround on certain issues, which are long-pending, then it would perhaps be too much,” he said.
“But we are working in the right direction. In some areas we are moving very fast and in some we are slow but steady,” he said.
He said both governments had made an institutional arrangement to resolve the boundary issue at the level of Special Representatives who had held 11 rounds of talks so far.
“I am quite hopeful that the Prime Minister’s visit to China will be very successful and he will have wide-ranging discussions with the new Chinese leadership after the Communist Party Congress,” he added.