LEAD: India, China seek early solution to border dispute

0 Comments | Asian Political News, Jan 22, 2001

NEW DELHI, Jan. 15 Kyodo

(EDS: UDPATING WITH DETAIL)

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Chinese parliamentary leader Li Peng agreed Monday to resolve an Indo-Chinese border dispute at the earliest time, giving new warmth to troubled bilateral ties, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Li and Vajpayee, expressing satisfaction at progress made on the contentious border issue, agreed to resolve their differences in a reasonable manner.

The two leaders, who met for nearly half an hour, admitted to bilateral discontent, but agreed ''the common ground between the two far outweighs the differences.''

Vajpayee urged China to work with India at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the interest of developing countries.

The two leaders, expressing satisfaction with progress to date in the process to clarify the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between the two countries, including a recent exchange of maps of the middle sector, agreed the process should be completed quickly.

The LAC clarification relates to three border sectors along their shared 4,000-kilometer frontier and officials of the two sides started on the middle sector, involving about 500 km of boundary, by exchanging maps in November.

The two countries have held a dozen rounds of expert-level discussions on the border problems at various points along their frontier.

India says China illegally occupies 37,700 square km that it seized in the war in the northwest, edging on Indian Kashmir.

Beijing claims India occupies 96,000 sq. km. that belongs to China in what is now India's northeastern state Arunachal Pradesh.

Declining to call Li's visit strictly ceremonial, the Indian spokesman said China's second-highest official had met a wide range of political leaders in India and discussed issues for bilateral relations.

The contentious issue of Tibet, however, did not come with Vajpayee nor Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh.

Security forces dispersed a number of Tibetans and jailed some of them for protesting Li's visit to India.

Li, chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), left for the southern city of Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, soon after his meeting with Vajpayee, which came nearly a week after his arrival in India on Jan 9.

Ranked second to President Jiang Zemin in the Chinese political hierarchy, Li is the most senior Chinese leader to visit India since New Delhi's nuclear tests in May 1998. India's thawing ties with China received a setback after New Delhi cited Beijing as the main threat to its security and conducted the nuclear tests.

Li earlier visited India in 1991 when he was premier.

Two important agreements, including the 1993 agreement on maintaining peace and tranquillity along the borders and a 1996 pact that put several confidence building measures in place to improve bilateral ties, were signed during Li's tenure as premier.

For India, the visit by the former premier is crucial for mending the uneasy ties between the two Asian giants.

The world's two most populous countries fought a 21-day war in 1962 and relations were decidedly frigid until then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited Beijing in 1988.

The five years that followed saw an improvement in ties marked by reciprocal visits by then Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and Chinese President Jiang before relations plummeted after the Indian nuclear tests.