India and China hold talks on border dispute

Agencies/New DelhiIndia and China yesterday held talks to resolve a longstanding dispute over their Himalayan border, the first such discussions since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power last year. China’s special representative Yang Jiechi was holding talks with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in New Delhi, external affairs ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said. Doval is assisted by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, a former Indian envoy to China. This is the first time that Doval is chairing the key talks as special representative. The talks come ahead of Modi’s expected visit to Beijing in May. Indian and Chinese forces were involved in a stand-off near on their disputed borders in September, during a visit to India by Chinese President Xi Jinping. India and China have a decades-old dispute over sections of their 3,500km border that has not been resolved despite 17 rounds of talks so far. India has regularly complained of incursions by Chinese troops along the border. The two nations fought a brief border war in 1962. Since Modi took over as prime minister last May, he has called for an early settlement of the border dispute. Xi has said he was committed to working with New Delhi to maintain “peace and tranquillity” until the boundary dispute was settled. Yang, who arrived here on Sunday night, will meet Modi today before he leaves.External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, during her visit to Beijing in February, had said that the Modi government “is committed to exploring an early settlement.”Yang has held the previous round of talks on the boundary question with then NSA Shivshankar Menon.