Special Representatives from India and China will meet in New Delhi on Monday for the fifteenth round of talks on the border dispute, both governments confirmed on Saturday.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Weimin said State Councillor Dai Bingguo, China's Special Representative in the negotiations, would travel to New Delhi on Sunday for the talks.
Besides the boundary negotiations, both countries will hold discussions “on a wide range of bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest,” the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement issued in New Delhi.
The talks were scheduled to take place last year in November, but were postponed at the last minute after China objected to the holding of a Buddhist conference in New Delhi, attended by the Dalai Lama, on the same dates.
Sending a positive signal ahead of the talks, Mr. Dai told Indian officials here on Wednesday, during a visit to India's newly opened embassy in Beijing, that both countries needed to handle issues “wisely, calmly and properly” to prevent them from “becoming barriers.”
Little progress
The long-running talks have made little progress, and are currently in the difficult second stage of negotiations, which involves agreeing upon a framework to settle the dispute. The first stage concluded with an agreement on political parameters and guiding principles in 2005. The final stage involves the specifics of delineating the border.
