'India, China progress in border negotiations'

HARBIN: India and China have established a Working Group to prepare a framework for the settlement of their vexed boundary issue, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced here on Thursday.

The 11th round of talks between the Special Representatives of India and China was successful and they have decided to set up a Working Group to prepare a framework for the resolution of the boundary issue, Mukherjee told reporters after holding a 50-minute meeting here with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi.

"Let us wait for the recommendations of the Working Group," Mukherjee, who is in this northeast Chinese city to attend the third standalone trilateral meeting of Foreign Ministers of India, China and Russia, said.

The apparent progress on the boundary issue comes ahead of the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as that by Congress President Sonia Gandhi from Thursday.

The 11th round of the Special Representative-level talks on India-China boundary question was held in Beijing from September 24-26.

The Special Representatives of the two countries, M. K. Narayanan, National Security Adviser, and Dai Bingguo, Vice Foreign Minister, held "useful and positive" discussions on the framework for the settlement of the India-China boundary question, the Indian side had said in a positive evaluation of the talks last month.

The unresolved Sino-Indian boundary issue has hampered the normal development of bilateral ties, with frequent reports of incursions, hurting the overall relations.