The special representatives of India and China began a new round of talks Monday aimed at resolving a decades-old dispute over their Himalayan border. Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon and Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo were leading the delegations at the two-day talks in New Delhi.
In dispute are several areas along the 3,500-kilometre border. The two countries fought a brief war over the border in 1962. The new negotiations were focused on firming up a framework that will then form the basis for delineating the borders on the map. The border dispute centres on 90,000 square kilometres in India's north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims, and 43,180 square kilometres along northern Jammu and Kashmir state, which India says is occupied by China.
An agreement on border management to prevent conflicts was expected, the IANS news agency reported citing Indian sources. The current talks are the 15th round since 2003. Recently, Menon had described the boundary question as a "difficult issue" that has remained unsolved. "On the settlement itself, we are in the second stage of the three-stage process of agreeing principles, a framework and finally a boundary line," he had said.
Ahead of the talks, Dai struck an optimistic note, saying the two countries must put aside their differences and seize "a golden period to grow China-India relations". "There does not exist such a thing as China's attempt to attack India or suppress India's development," he wrote in an article in The Hindu newspaper. "The world has enough space for China and India to achieve common development, as there are so many areas for us to work together," he wrote. The boundary talks were originally scheduled for November 2011, but were postponed after India refused to concede to Beijing's objections to exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama's participation in a Buddhist conclave in New Delhi.
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