India and China have established a Working Group to prepare a framework for the settlement of their vexed boundary issue, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced at Harbin in China on Thursday.
The 11th round of talks between the Special Representatives of India and China was successful and they have decided to set up a Working Group to prepare a framework for the resolution of the boundary issue, said Mukherjee after 50-minute meeting with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi.
"Let us wait for the recommendations of the Working Group," said Mukherjee, who is in this northeast Chinese city to attend the third standalone trilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of India, China and Russia.
The apparent progress on the boundary issue comes ahead of the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as that by Congress President Sonia Gandhi from today.
The 11th round of the Special Representative-level talks on India-China boundary question was held in Beijing from September 24-26.
The Special Representatives of the two countries, National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo held 'useful and positive' discussions on the framework for the settlement of the India-China boundary question.
The unresolved Sino-Indian boundary issue has hampered the normal development of bilateral ties, with frequent reports of incursions hurting the overall relations.
Director General of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police General V K Joshi had said on Tuesday that over 140 incursions have been reported along the Indo-Chinese border, stretching from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, over the past year.
Unable to find a negotiated settlement through diplomatic channels, India and China appointed Special Representatives in June 2003 to address the border issue from a political perspective of the overall bilateral relations.
India says China is illegally occupying 43,180 sq kms of Jammu and Kashmir including 5,180 sq km illegally ceded to Beijing by Islamabad under the Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement in 1963. On the other hand, China accuses India of possessing some 90,000 sq km of Chinese territory, mostly in Arunachal Pradesh.
Meanwhile, the meeting between Mukherjee and Yang also touched upon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's planned visit to China, informed External Affairs Ministry spokesman, Navtej Sarna. The meeting reviewed the preparations for the prime minister's visit, he said.
Mukherjee and Yang also looked at the possibilities of increasing bilateral trade which has been galloping at over 30 per cent in recent times. However, China has enjoyed a growing trade surplus with India running into over US $ four billion in the first six months of this year, causing concern in New Delhi.
The two foreign ministers also discussed regional issues, including the latest situation in Myanmar.
On Wednesday, after the trilateral meeting of foreign ministers, Mukherjee had stated that India was against imposing new sanctions on Myanmar but urged Yangon to involve all the stakeholders in advancing political reforms and national reconciliation, a move jointly supported by China and Russia.
"We believe that the initiative taken by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to open dialogue amongst the various stake-holders in Myanmar should be encouraged," he said.
Mukherjee said India has also suggested that the process of political reform and national reconciliation should be expedited on a broad base and equally among all stakeholders.
"We believe that Myanmar authorities should be encouraged to engage in the process of dialogue with the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General (Ibrahim Gambari), the initiative which he has taken should be encouraged to take it to the logical conclusion and there should not be any sanctions at this stage," the minister emphasised again on Thursday when asked about the Myanmar issue.
Mukherjee, accompanied by Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and other senior officials, left for New Delhi on a special flight.
In a bilateral meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday, Mukherjee had discussed the prime minister's upcoming visit to Moscow in the second week of November and other bilateral and regional issues of common concern.
