BEIJING – A longstanding boundary dispute between China an India will be on the agenda when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visits New Delhi next week, but it will not stand in the way of cooperation, China said on Friday.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei said the giant neighbours, the world’s two most populous countries, were also likely to discuss Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who lives in an Indian hill station along with Tibet’s government-in-exile and is reviled by Beijing as a separatist.
“The boundary question will not undermine efforts in other areas of cooperation,” Wu told a news briefing.
India and China fought a brief but bitter war in 1962 over their 3,500-km Himalayan border, but in 2003 appointed envoys to negotiate a solution to the dispute.
Wu said there was good momentum for an agreement on guiding principles to resolve the issue, but hinted that a final resolution was a long way off.
“The differences over the boundary question are actually quite big and the question is very difficult to settle,” he said.
Despite the border dispute and India’s treatment of the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, relations with China have been warming.
The two held joint naval exercises in 2003, India’s army chief made a fist trip to China in a decade last year and trade between China and India jumped to more than $13 billion in 2004 from $100 million a decade ago.
China has historically had a closer relationship with India’s rival Pakistan, to which it sells arms and supplies hundreds of millions in development aid, but it has been taking a more balanced approach towards the region.
Wen’s trip to South Asia will begin in Pakistan on Tuesday, where he will give the keynote address at a meeting of the 26-nation Asian Cooperation Dialogue, set up in 2002 as a forum for Asian nations to discuss economic issues.
Wu said he hoped India and Pakistan could reconcile and was pleased to see momentum in their talks.
“We are delighted with such improvement and hope the two sides can continue to talk and settle some of their historical disputes through dialogue,” he said.
“China wishes to see a South Asian family enjoying peace, friendship, amity and prosperity.”
Wen’s April 5-12 trip will also take him to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
