New Delhi: Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi will visit India next week for talks with national security advisor Ajit Doval under the special representatives mechanism for addressing the border issue, the external affairs ministry said on Saturday.
Wang, who is also a member of the politburo of the Communist Party of China, is visiting India during August 18-19 at Doval’s invitation. He will also meet external affairs minister S Jaishankar, the ministry said in a brief statement.
“During his visit, [Wang] will hold the 24th round of the Special Representatives’ (SR) talks on the India-China boundary question with India’s SR, NSA Shri Doval,” the statement said.
Wang will visit days before Jaishankar travels to Russia during August 21-23 for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and to co-chair a meeting of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC) with first deputy prime minister Denis Manturov.
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Both meetings are crucial for India’s ties with China and Russia amid strains in the relationship with the US.
Wang’s visit is a follow-up to Doval’s trip to Beijing last December and part of preparations for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China at the end of this month for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit, people familiar with the matter said.
Talks in the Special Representatives format resumed after Modi and President Xi Jinping met in the Russian city of Kazan on October 23 last year – two days after India and China reached an understanding on ending the military standoff on the LAC – and decided to revive several mechanisms to normalise bilateral ties and address the border dispute.
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The two Special Representatives are expected to consider several confidence-building measures to bolster peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), including resumption of border trade, and to discuss a mutually acceptable framework for settling the border issue, the people said. At their last meeting in December, Doval and Wang “resolved to inject more vitality into this process”, according to an Indian readout.
Since the end of the face-off in Ladakh sector of the LAC, which saw both sides amassing nearly 50,000 troops each, the two sides resumed the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra to the Tibet region after a gap of five years in April. This was followed by India resuming tourist visas for Chinese nationals in July.
India and China are in advanced negotiations on resuming direct flights and trade through selected border posts, and there has been “forward movement” on restrictions imposed by China on fertiliser exports to India, the people said.
