India, China special representatives' meet for border talks postponed

New Delhi: In a sudden development, the border talks between India and China scheduled to commence on Monday have been indefinitely postponed. Officials were tight lipped about the postponement but sources said that some demands by the Chinese side, which were regarded as “unacceptable” by India, led to the postponement of the 15th round of talks on the long-pending boundary problem. Chinese Special Representative Dai Bingguo was to travel to Delhi for talks with his Indian counterpart Shivshankar Menon to follow up on their talks in the 14th round in Beijing in November last year. [caption id=“attachment_140680” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A decision to set up the mechanism was taken at a meeting Wen had with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Sanya in April. AFP”]  [/caption] Indian Ambassador to China, Jaishankar, who was scheduled to be here for the talks, is still coming to Delhi despite the postponement. The External Affairs Ministry issued a terse statement “we are looking forward to the 15th round of SRs talks in the near future and the two sides remain in touch to find convenient dates for the meeting.” Dai and Menon were expected to discuss putting in place a mechanism for border management mooted by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during his visit to India last year. A decision to set up the mechanism was taken at a meeting Wen had with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Sanya in April. Earlier this month, government sources had said that India would be hosting the SR talks November-end. The dialogue at the level of SRs is a three-stage process which started in 2005 with the declaration of the Guiding Principles and Political Parameters. The second stage was identifying the framework for resolution of the boundary dispute and the third stage to apply that framework. The second and the third stages are the “hardest” part of the negotiations and efforts are underway to conclude these," the sources had said. The SR mechanism was established in 2003, when Menon was India’s ambassador to Beijing. PTI