NEW DELHI, 24 October 2003 — Top officials from India and China began landmark negotiations here yesterday to try to resolve their protracted border dispute which took the world’s two most populous nations to war in 1962.
Dai Binggao, China’s vice foreign minister who arrived overnight, met India’s National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra to discuss the issue, Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said at the start of the talks.
He said the discussions, which were planned during Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to China in June this year, will last until today.
“Dai and Mishra first had a one-to-one meeting for about half an hour before they were joined by their respective delegates,” an Indian government source said.
“The talks are being held in an extremely cordial atmosphere and the two sides have articulated their points of view,” the source told AFP.
Mishra’s delegation included officials from Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s office and the Foreign 0inistry while Dai is assisted by Chinese Ambassador to India Hua Junduo and senior officials from Beijing.
No further details were available from the closed-door talks, which come after 13 rounds of inconclusive discussions over the border dispute between junior-level officials from India and China for more than a decade.
Mishra and Dai were appointed envoys by New Delhi and Beijing during Vajpayee’s trip to China.
During the Indian leader’s talks in Beijing, the two sides agreed to reopen the Nathu La Pass between Sikkim, the former protectorate New Delhi merged with the union in 1975, and Chinese-ruled Tibet.
India interprets the agreement on the Nathu La Pass a first, if tacit, recognition by China of Sikkim as an Indian state.
India, where Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama lives in exile, in turn stated it considered Tibet an “autonomous region” within the “People’s Republic of China,” a turn of phrase Indian officials insisted did not change its position on the Himalayan territory.
Tibetan exiles, meanwhile, staged noisy street rallies yesterday in central New Delhi to protest the ongoing talks, saying Beijing had no right to discuss the boundaries of Tibet.
“We earnestly appeal to the Indian government not to hold any boundary talks with China,” the Tibetan Youth Congress said in a statement after police arrested some 30 of the group’s protesters.
“China is not the legitimate country to talk about the India-Tibetan borders,” the Congress said and added Beijing’s administrative control on their homeland was nothing but an “illegal occupation” of Tibet.
The two Asian giants fought a brief but bitter war in 1962 and are yet to demarcate their regions with an established border. Instead, they use the post-conflict Line of Actual Control to identify their respective territories.
India accuses China of occupying 38,000 square kilometers of territory in Kashmir while Beijing lays claim to 90,000 square kilometers — all of Arunachal Pradesh state, the scene of the border war between the two.
The dialogue is also expected to overcome a chill in ties which developed after India last month alleged that a Chinese patrol crossed into Arunachal Pradesh while Vajpayee was winding up his six-day trip to China on June 26. China countered that it was Indian personnel who made an incursion into Chinese territory.
