Premier hotline to aid border talks with India

By Li Xiaokun (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-10 07:13

A premier-level hotline between Beijing and New Delhi will be established to help further boost bilateral relations following the 13th China-India Boundary Talks, according to India's national newspaper The Hindu.

As predicted by analysts, no concrete progress on resolving the nations' dispute over 125,000 sq km of territory was made during the two-day talks in New Delhi between China's special representative State Councilor Dai Bingguo and M.K. Narayanan, India's national security advisor to the prime minister.

But the Foreign Ministry announced after the conclusion of the talks on Saturday that both sides vowed to continue seeking a "fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable" solution to the issue and would jointly maintain peace at the border until that time.

"The next few years will be a period of opportunity for great development of Sino-Indian relations and the settlement of the border issue," Dai told Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the talks, according to a ministry press release.

During the meeting with Dai on Saturday, Singh said China and India enjoyed close cooperation on major international affairs, such as climate change.

Both are expected to defend the interests of developing nations during climate change talks in Bonn, Germany, this month, while India's envoy on climate change has already visited Beijing and its environment minister Jairam Ramesh will arrive on Friday.

"There certainly appears a strong desire to 'clean up' the relationship," the Times of India newspaper wrote in an editorial yesterday.

The latest round of talks came as India flexed its military muscle around the disputed area by modernizing border roads and deploying a squadron of Su-30 strike aircraft, while 30,000 new troops are expected to be sent to the region. It made it potentially the most eye-catching meeting between the nations since the representative border mechanism was established in 2003.

The talks also touched on trade and other economic issues, as well as bilateral relations and terrorism.

Sun Shihai, deputy director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said the talks helped to build trust between the countries and will aid future boundary negotiations.

China shares a border of about 2,000 km with India.

In 1914, Britain created the "McMahon Line" to separate the nations but successive Chinese governments have never recognized it.

The two countries fought a brief war over the border in 1962.