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| Saturday, 28 June 2003 |
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India hopes to speed up settlement of border rows with China SHANGHAI, Friday (Reuters)-India and China hope the appointment of special envoys will speed up the settlement of border disputes at the heart of decades of uneasy ties between the giant neighbours, India's prime minister said on Friday. Atal Behari Vajpayee, ending the first visit to China by India's leader in a decade, told reporters the appointment of senior envoys to deal with the disputes was a significant step forward. "We hope this new initiative will accelerate the search for a solution to this vexed problem," he said. India and China, which fought a brief war in 1962, claim large tracts of each other's territories. They have held several rounds of talks since 1998 to resolve where exactly the 3,500 km (2,170 mile) Himalayan border should lie, but have made little progress. India's National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo have been named as envoys to the border talks. "This is an important step. They will look for ways to move forward," Vajpayee said. He said a dispute over the Himalayan state of Sikkim, which China had long refused to recognise as Indian territory, would soon be over after Beijing had agreed to open border trade through the area. "With this protocol which would enable trade between Sikkim and Tibet, we have also started the process by which Sikkim will cease to be an issue in India-China relations," Vajpayee said. India annexed tiny Sikkim, which borders Tibet, in 1975 after its legislature voted to abolish the monarchy. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman however said this week that Sikkim remained an enduring issue with India which could not be solved overnight. During Vajpayee's visit, India acknowledged for the first time in writing that it considered Tibet as part of China and would not allow any activities against Beijing from its soil. Thousands of Tibetans led by spiritual leader Dalai Lama fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. Vajpayee however said there was no change in India's stance on Tibet. "I would like to state that there is no ambiguity or inconsistency in our position on the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. We were therefore happy to reiterate our position in the joint declaration." |
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