By IANS
New Delhi : India and China will sign at least five pacts during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s three-day visit to Beijing starting Sunday in fields as diverse as land management, housing, traditional medicine, railways and geosciences.
Details of the five memorandums of understanding (MoUs) were announced by Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi after a cabinet meeting chaired by the prime minister here Thursday.
A MoU on railways will promote cooperation between Chinese Railways and Indian Railways and will be valid for three years, Dasmunsi told reporters.
An MoU on cooperation for the development of traditional medicine systems and the adoption of common strategies for global branding of their systems is seen as a significant example of emerging synergy between the two Asian powers.
Another MoU on cooperation in land resource management, land administration and resettlement underlines the desire of the two countries to share their developmental experiences to bridge the rural-urban gap and its attendant problems.
The minister also announced a MoU for cooperation in the field of geosciences, but did not provide specifics.
According to official sources, this pact could prove to be the most important one as it could provide for technical cooperation in delineating the disputed India-China border.
India and China have held 11 rounds of talks to resolve the border dispute but no breakthrough has been achieved so far.
The decades-old border dispute will figure in discussions between Manmohan Singh and Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao.
India and China have set the resolution of the border row as the strategic objective of their growing relationship. They finalised guiding principles and political parameters to resolve it when the Chinese premier visited India in April 2005.