New Delhi – Indian President Pratibha Patil Wednesday left for a six-day visit to China during which she is expected to sign a number of agreements to bolster ties.
Patil is scheduled meet her counterpart Hu Jintao on Thursday in Beijing and discuss strengthening ties among efforts to settle their decades-old border dispute, the foreign office said.
“The visit signals our unequivocal commitment to deepen and expand our strategic and cooperative partnership with China,” Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said.
Rao said a number of agreements were under discussion and likely to be signed during the visit, but declined to give details.Political dialogue, cultural diplomacy and economic cooperation were the focus of the visit, officials said.
During the visit, the first by an Indian president to China in a decade, Patil, who is accompanied by senior politicians and 60 business executives, will also meet National People’s Congress Chairman Wu Bangguo and Premier Wen Jiabao.
Patil will also inaugurate an Indian-style Buddhist temple in Luoyang city and visit the Shanghai World Expo.
The two nations fought a war in 1962 but are now rapidly expanding economic ties, with China becoming India’s largest trading partner. Bilateral trade grew 34 per cent in 2008 to touch 51.8 billion dollars but slipped to 43.27 billion dollars in 2009 owing to the global recession.
The contentious border dispute involves two areas – 90,000 square kilometres largely in India’s north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims is illegally occupied by India and 43,180 square kilometres of territory along the northern Jammu and Kashmir state which India maintains is forcibly occupied by China.
