NEW DELHI, India- India and China ended talks on a 23yearold border dispute without a settlement Saturday, and no new discussions were scheduled on the major barrier to improved ties between Asia’s two major powers. In an interview Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi said resolution of the border issue was vital to improvement in Sino Indian relations, which have been chilly since a 1962 war.
The talks focus on 14,500 square miles of the desolate Aksai China region of the western Himalayas, occupied by China in the 1962 war. China is unwilling to return the area because it has built a strategic road.
Haidar said no further meetings of the boundary subgroups were scheduled before the full delegations met in a final session Monday.
The full delegations talked for three hours Saturday and “had an exchange of views on the international situation and on specific issues of common interest,” including the Nov. 1920 summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, nuclear disarmament and Asian relations, Haidar said.
Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Salman Haidar said boundary negotiators held 21/2 hours of discussions that addressed “the substantive issues” regarding the dispute. He declined to disclose details of the session, the third since Monday when the two sides opened their sixth round of negotiations since 1981.
In an interview with the Japan Economical Journal, Gandhi said his government had hoped for progress in the current round of talks, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
Separate subgroups also discussed other areas of bilateral relations, including cultural exchanges and science and technology.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 15, 1985
