India PM Singh to visit, China says
BEIJING (AFP) — Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit China this month as the two nations seek to end a decades-old border dispute and push forward warming ties, Beijing said.
Singh will visit China from January 13 to 15, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters, offering few specifics on the trip.
However, she said the two sides planned to continue efforts to sort out the dispute over the location of their border in the Himalayan region that led to a brief war in 1962.
"We will make joint efforts to try to find a fair and rational settlement acceptable to both countries," Jiang said when asked about the dispute.
India says China occupies 38,000 square kilometres (14,670 square miles) of its territory, while Beijing claims the whole of the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which is 90,000 square kilometres.
Jiang noted that the two sides held three rounds of talks on the issue last year, calling them "fruitful."
The two Asian giants have seen a thaw in relations in recent years, with their first-ever joint military exercise in southwestern China last month the most recent example.
Jiang also pointed to the expanding trade between the two nations, which reached 34.2 billion dollars from January to November, up 54 percent year-on-year.
"We hope that with the visit the two countries can... promote the healthy and long-term development of a strategic partnership," Jiang said.
