As part of preparations for the visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to India next month, officials from the two sides are drafting a set of principles that could form the basis for the final resolution of the vexed boundary dispute. If they could complete the exercise in the next few weeks, the agreement on the guiding principles for the boundary settlement could be announced during Wen Jiabao’s visit to India in the second week of April. Such an agreement would be a major political breakthrough in bilateral relations and would make Wen’s visit to India a memorable one. India and China acknowledge that the new guiding principles should not be abstract propositions. For years now, phrases like ‘‘mutual understanding and mutual accommodation’’ and ‘‘fair and reasonable settlement’’ have passed off as principles. New Delhi and Beijing are now looking for a definitive guide to the actual territorial adjustment that the two sides have to make. Meanwhile, China has welcomed the government’s designation last week of National Security Advisor M K Narayanan as the Special Representative for the boundary talks. This ends the brief pause in recent negotiations caused by the death of J N Dixit in January. The work on drafting these principles began as a follow-up to then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to China in June 2003. The two sides had then agreed to elevate the negotiations on the boundary dispute to the political level and resolve the question on the basis of ‘‘give and take’’. Vajpayee’s National Security Advisor, Brajesh Mishra, was appointed the Special Representative for these talks and had two rounds of talks with his counterpart Dai Bingguo. Mishra’s successor J N Dixit too held two rounds of talks. It is believed that the drafting of the ‘‘guiding principles’’ has continued at a lower level since the demise of Dixit. China hopes that the exercise can now be accelerated and clinched through another round of consultations between the two Special Representatives. While officials have made considerable progress, political intervention might now be needed to bridge the remaining distance between the two sides. For one, China clearly believes that a substantive adjustment of the current boundary will be necessary for a final settlement. India, on the other hand, might prefer only marginal modifications in current alignment of the boundary. The differences are now centred around the question of Tawang, which is part of Arunachal Pradesh. Beijing is looking for significant concessions on Tawang from India and promising similar territorial concessions in Ladakh in return. For India, the political difficulty of parting with Tawang is inevitably reflected in drafting of the guiding principles. The challenge before the two sides, on the eve of Wen’s visit, is to come up with innovative principles that will help them to resolve the Tawang question in a mutually satisfactory manner.
