India, China boundary talks postponed

New Delhi, Nov 25 (PTI) The India-China talks on the long-pending boundary problem, expected to be held here early next week, have been postponed. China's Special Representative Dai Bingguo was to travel to Delhi this month-end for the 15th round of the border talks with India's National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon. "We are looking forward to the 15th round of Special Representative talks in the near future and the two sides remain in touch to find convenient dates for the meeting," India's External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said. He was replying to questions on the dates of the Special Representative (SR) talks to be hosted by India. 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 India's 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 14th round of SR talks was held in Beijing in November last year. The SR mechanism was established by the two countries in 2003. PTI