The Hindu : Chinese Minister coming today for border talks

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 22, 2003

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Chinese Minister coming today for border talks

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

NEW DELHI OCT. 21. The Chinese Special Representative, Dai Bingguo, will arrive here late on Wednesday evening for the first round of talks with his Indian counterpart, Brajesh Mishra, on the contentious border dispute between the two countries.

South Block sources said that the talks, to be held on October 23 and 24, were in pursuance of the agreement between the Chinese and Indian Prime Ministers, Wen Jiabao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in June this year.

Mr. Dai, Senior Vice-Foreign Minister, is high up in the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy, and has been involved in discussions relating to the North Korean nuclear issue as well. Mr. Mishra, National Security Adviser and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, is an old China hand and had been posted in Beijing as well.

The terms of the Dai-Mishra dialogue were set out in the joint statement issued by Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Wen: "The two sides agreed to each appoint a Special Representative to explore from the political perspective of the overall bilateral relationship the framework of a boundary settlement." Talking to this correspondent recently, the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, said he expected that Mr. Dai and Mr. Mishra would determine the "basic principles" on how to approach the boundary dispute. He hoped that they would also be able to grapple with the more substantive issues so that that the two countries could move forward. According to analysts, the current exercise between the two countries on attempting to find a framework to resolve the boundary issue from a political standpoint is a new and exciting development in bilateral relations.

A fact also being noted is that this development has taken place with a new Chinese leadership at the helm in Beijing. Since the June meeting, the two Prime Ministers also met on October 8 in Bali, on the sidelines of the ASEAN deliberations.

Significantly, even before their second meeting in four months, the Chinese side had informed the Government of India that Sikkim would no longer figure as an "independent country" on the official website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

This Chinese move on Sikkim, coming before the first-ever Dai-Mishra talks, is being seen as a confidence-building measure. As promised to the Indian side, changes in the Chinese maps on Sikkim are likely to follow.

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