Menon to hold border talks with Chinese interlocutor today

NSA reaches Beijing,to meet Chinese counterpart Dai Bingguo

Ahead of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabaos visit to New Delhi in mid-December,India and China will hold border talks for the 14th time when National Security Advisor Shivshanker Menon meets top Chinese interlocutor Dai Bingguo in Beijing on Monday.

Menon,who flew down to the Chinese capital on Sunday,is Indias special representative for the border talks and will stay there for three days.

This will be Menons first round of border talks as the special representative since he became the NSA this year. However,he is no stranger to the border talks,having been Indias ambassador in Beijing and Foreign Secretary.

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Menon is expected to infuse fresh energy into the efforts to resolve the complex boundary dispute as he shares a good rapport with the top Chinese leadership and has spent a substantial part of his diplomatic career in Beijing (he was posted there when the Tiananmen Square massacre happened in 1989) and speaks fluent Mandarin.

Menon will be assisted by Indian Ambassador to China S Jaishankar and Joint Secretary (in charge of China desk) in MEA Gautam Bambawale all of them speak fluent Mandarin. This will be followed by a banquet to be hosted by Dai and wind up with another round on Tuesday.

The last round of special representatives talks was held in New Delhi in 2009 between the then NSA,M K Narayanan,and Dai.

The latest round assumes significance as it precedes the final senior-level discussions between the two countries before the Premiers New Delhi visit.

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India and China share about 4,000-km-long border. China has staked claim to Aksai Chin in the Ladakh region and Arunachal Pradesh,which Beijing refers to as southern Tibet.

Though India and China began discussions to resolve the border dispute in 1980,the process got an impetus after the two countries agreed to hold talks by designated special representatives. The two countries also signed agreements in 1993 and 1996 to maintain peace and stability in the border areas. In 2005,China and India signed a political guiding principle on demarcation of the boundary.

In a fresh move easing off the strain in the bilateral relations,the Chinese embassy in Delhi recently issued a stick-on visa instead of the stapled visa to an Indian singer from J&K,Tanya Gupta,who performed at the closing ceremony of the Asian Games in Guangzhou.