Sushma Swaraj with Chinese President Xi Jinping
in Beijing on Monday. (AP)
New Delhi, Feb. 2. India and China have quietly set an ambitious May deadline for their negotiators to hammer out a "breakthrough" in their century-old boundary dispute in time for a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Beijing announced by foreign minister Sushma Swaraj yesterday.
National security adviser Ajit Doval will soon travel to China for the first of a series of negotiations the two nations have agreed on during Sushma's ongoing visit to Beijing where she today met President Xi Jinping, senior officials familiar with the plans have told The Telegraph.
Doval's dialogue will be built on a 12-year-long, three-stage process of talks spanning four predecessors, and both UPA and NDA governments. And any agreement the two nations arrive at to resolve the dispute may still take years to actually implement along the 4,057km Line of Actual Control that separates territories India and China control.
But even an announcement of a framework to eventually demarcate a mutually acceptable border would represent a second major diplomatic accomplishment in Modi's first year in office, after India and the US declared a breakthrough on their contentious nuclear deal.
"That's the next big diplomatic target for the government," an official said. "The breakthrough has to be ready to be announced when the PM visits in May."
Sushma had yesterday told reporters in Beijing that Modi would visit China before the first-year anniversary of his government on May 26, and today met her counterpart Wang Yi, and then President Xi.
The Chinese President told India's foreign minister he would like to take Modi to Xi'an, the capital of the northwest Shaanxi province that boasts, on its outskirts, the township of Fupong where Xi was born. Modi had hosted Xi in his home state of Gujarat last September, though the two could not travel to the PM's birthplace Vadnagar. A visit by Modi to Xi'an would also be loaded with symbolism because the town - famous as the home of the Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang - is also one end of the Silk Road that bound Indian and Chinese trade for centuries.
"I have full confidence in India-China relations and I believe that new progress will be achieved in growing this bilateral relationship in this new year," Xi told Sushma.
Sushma and foreign secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar - who is accompanying her - also discussed with their counterparts plans to open up a third route for the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage through Nathu La in Sikkim this June.
But the key agreement India and China hope to seal this year, officials said, is what is officially known as the Framework for a Resolution of the Boundary Question - the second of the three steps the two nations agreed to in 2003 as the route to a settlement.
The dispute, that flared into a war in 1962, is rooted in the British demarcation of what is known as the McMahon Line in 1914, separating the two nations. China has never accepted the line.
Starting in 2003 when Brajesh Mishra was Atal Bihari Vajpayee's national security adviser, the two nations have held 17 rounds of talks. Led by what the two nations identify as "special representatives" for the boundary talks - effectively the NSA till now has represented India - these talks yielded their first agreement in 2005.
The 2005 agreement spelt out the political underpinnings and guiding principles for the talks on a border settlement.
Over the past decade, Indian and Chinese negotiators have been trying to iron out differences on the second step - the framework for a resolution, effectively detailing the outlines of the settlement plan. The third stage will be the actual delineation of the boundary.
But despite the talks since 2003, India and China had till last year largely adhered to Deng Xiaoping's call to leave contentious border disputes to a "wiser generation".
The first clear indication of a deviation from that policy came last September, when Xi visited New Delhi.
Speaking at the capital's colonial-era Hyderabad House after four hours of talks, Modi and Xi both publicly declared - in their independent statements - that they were seeking an "early" resolution to the border dispute.
In Beijing yesterday, Sushma repeated that promise.
"On the boundary question," the foreign minister said, "my government is committed to exploring an early settlement."
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