New Delhi, April 10
Special Representatives (SRs) of India and China, National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan and Vice-Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo, respectively, today held the fifth round of talks on the border dispute and finalised documents on political parameters and guiding principles.
Mr Narayanan told The Tribune tonight that his talks with Mr Dai were held in a cordial atmosphere and were “extremely successful” in the sense that both sides were keen to putting border dispute behind them by resolving it and getting on to the more important business of expanding bilateral cooperation. When asked whether Beijing, like Pakistan, was trying to engage India in a 100-metre race by demanding a specific timeframe for resolving the border dispute, Mr Narayanan replied in the negative.
“No, certainly not. There is no suggestion from the Chinese that the border dispute must be resolved within a specific timeframe. Both countries are handling the issue very maturely,” Mr Narayanan said. Asked if the question of a trade-off between India and China on Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin in Jammu and Kashmir came up during the talks, he categorically stated: “The question of territory was not discussed at this stage.”
There have been reports in a section of the media that “India keeps Tawang while Aksai Chin remains with China” kind of trade-off was going to materialise during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s April 9-12 India visit. Mr Narayanan elaborated
by saying that today’s talks were only the first stage. The next stage would be thrashing out an agreed framework for proceeding with the border talks.
Future rounds of talks between the two countries’ SRs will take place on the basis of this Agreed Framework. It will be only after this that the question of territorial adjustments would be discussed. Mr Narayanan said those technicalities would be dealt with at the Joint Working Group (JWG) level.
Asked about the Guiding Principles, he said these were the general guidelines that the two countries had thrashed out for resolving the border dispute and how to take bilateral relations from strength to strength.
The documents on political parameters and guiding principles will be put before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for their final approval when they hold talks here tomorrow.
The two SRs also conveyed to one another their respective governments’ keenness to put bitterness and suspicions of history behind them and move forward to a new Asian age together. The documents on political parameters and guiding principles had come up for discussion yesterday between Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei.
The perception in Beijing and New Delhi is that the two rising superpowers should walk down the road to peace, prosperity and development together as partners and not as competitors. The official line of the two governments is that there is enough space in the international arena to accommodate a rising China as well as a rising India.
Mr Wen has already gone on record to say that the boundary dispute with India could be resolved in a mutually acceptable way. Mr Wen had recently said as long as the two sides acted in the spirit of mutual understanding and mutual accommodation and respect history while taking the reality into account, they would be able to find a mutually acceptable solution to the boundary question through negotiations on an equal footing.
The Ministry of External Affairs is not prepared to talk about the broad contours of the political parameters and guiding principles for resolving the border dispute that the two SRs finalised today.
