New Delhi, September 17
The special representatives (SRs) of India and China will hold the 12th round of talks on the vexed boundary issue in Beijing tomorrow, amid strains in ties between the two countries in the wake of a determined attempt by Beijing to block a consensus on the India-specific waiver at the NSG meet in Vienna earlier this month.
National security adviser M.K. Narayanan, who also acts as India’s SR, will meet Chinese state counsellor Dai Bingguo, who is the SR on the Chinese side, over the next two days.
The two countries had appointed SRs to look at the boundary issue from the political perspective during then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to Beijing in June 2003.
Though officials on both sides claim they are making progress, not much seems to have been achieved by the two sides in the 11 rounds held so far. Strategic experts say mutual suspicion between the two sides is so intense that it would be a Herculean task for them to arrive at an understanding.
The NSG episode has only added to the problems between the two sides. China, which had all along given an impression to New Delhi that it would not come in the way of NSG amending its rules to allow India to undertake nuclear commerce, openly sided with those countries which argued against the 45-member cartel giving a clean waiver to New Delhi.
Beijing’s stand at the NSG came as a rude shock to India, which conveyed its unhappiness to the Chinese side when Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi visited New Delhi
last week.
