CALCUTTA, 16 November 2004 — National Security Adviser, J. N. Dixit, will leave for Beijing today for the fourth round of talks aimed at resolving the border dispute between India and China.

Dixit’s delegation will negotiate with the Chinese side headed by Foreign Affairs Vice-Minister Dai Bingguo.

Analysts say that the three-day talks is crucial as it precedes a meeting between India’s new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, on the sidelines of an ASEAN conference in Vientiane, Laos, on Nov. 29-30.

Last month, State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan met several Indian leaders in New Delhi in what is described by both sides as a successful visit. Tang said that China favored a “down to earth” approach to resolve the land dispute through “give and take” raising hopes of a breakthrough.

The two sides are trying to reach a settlement on their 3,500km border, completing a process begun during former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to China in June 2003 when political envoys were appointed to resolve the decades-old row.

They were assigned to resolve bilateral differences after more than 15 years of meetings of a joint working group (JWG) comprising diplomats and defense officials failed to produce a resolution of the land dispute, over which India and China fought a brief war in 1962.

The nuclear-armed neighbors have still not demarcated a border, with the post-conflict Line of Actual Control identifying their respective territories.

India claims China is occupying 38,000 sq km of its territory in the remote Aksai Chin area and 5,180 sq km in northern Kashmir, ceded to it by Pakistan.

China claims rights to 90,000 sq km of Indian-held territory, including almost the whole of the northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

The two neighbors have been negotiating since 1998 to demarcate exactly where their 4,000km shared border lies, but with little success. So far, the two sides have discussed only the least contentious middle sector bordering Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh.

Maps of the sensitive western and eastern sectors have yet to be discussed. The India-China border extends from northwest Kashmir to the junction of India, China and Myanmar in the east.