Beijing comes to Delhi today to put history behind

Still, one ‘‘pragmatic variant’’ to the 40-year-old imbroglio has certainly gripped parts of the public imagination in India. That is, while China and India retain control of their respective territories on an as-is-where-is basis, pilgrims from both sides will have special privileges and rights to travel to the other side.

For example, Hindu pilgrims would have easy access to Kailash Mansarovar, while Tibetans on the Chinese side would have the right to worship at the Buddhist monastery in Tawang.

Dai arrives here tomorrow evening, but his Indian journey will likely incorporate days of leisure in Chennai and Kanyakumari after the day-long dialogue on October 23 and separate talks with the Indian leadership on October 24.

On the anvil is the ‘‘political direction’’ that Mishra and Dai will impart to settle the boundary dispute, with both sides hoping they will be able to move on a ‘‘fast track’’ when compared to the snail’s pace taken by the Joint Working Group that has been clarifying the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between China and India for at least the last decade.

Even though South Block is wary of discussing any ‘‘give and take’’ in the talks, India has claims to 90,000 sq km in Aksai Chin while China claims 90,000 sq km in Arunachal Pradesh.

However, with bilateral trade — it now touches $6 billion — acting as a driver for both sides to improve ties, New Delhi is hopeful of a positive outcome of these talks: many more meetings.

Highly placed sources here pointed out that it was PM Vajpayee as Foreign minister in 1979 who first broached the subject with then Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping, but history intervened in the form of a Chinese invasion of Vietnam and Vajpayee’s trip itself fell through. The second time around when Rajiv Gandhi visited in December 1988, sources said ‘‘he was determined’’ to settle the boundary. But he lost the election the year after, the JWG that was formed somehow lost its original purpose and got diverted into the jungle of bureaucratic jargon.

The renewed ‘‘political mandate’’ to be imparted by Mishra and Dai on Thursday is key to the boundary talks and constitutes the fundamental difference from the nuts-and-bolts delineation that is the responsibility of the JWG and the Experts Group, the sources added. For example, the JWG has only managed to exchange maps of the Middle Sector (constituting parts of Himachal, Uttaranchal and UP) so far.

Analysts pointed out that the main challenge and goal of the talks is to ultimately ‘‘fuse’’ the boundary with the LAC, that too within a suitable time-frame, so that ‘‘a pragmatic solution’’ to the 40-year-old dispute can be found.

Neither Mishra nor Dai, anointed Special Representatives by their respective sides during the PM’s visit to China in June, are strangers to this story. On the eve of PM Vajpayee’s visit, New Delhi is said to have sounded Beijing out about giving ‘‘political momentum’’ to the boundary dispute. Beijing was positive.

So when the PM met Premier Wen on the morning of June 23 and proposed the institution of the Special Representatives, the Chinese leader immediately agreed. He was back the same afternoon, after consultatations with Chinese President Hu Jintao and the chairman of the Military Commission Jiang Zemin, to offer the name of Dai Bingguo.

The fact that Dai was to be the chief Chinese interlocutor on the North Korean question and in this capacity dealt very closely with the US, was not lost on New Delhi.

Certainly, neither side is ready for ‘‘final status’’ talks on the boundary that stretches from Kashmir in the north — known as the Western sector which includes 5180 sq-km of the Shaksgam valley ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963 — to Arunachal Pradesh in the Eastern sector, of which all 90,000 sq km is claimed by China. The latter includes the famous Buddhist monastery in Tawang, considered to be one of the holiest shrines of the Tibetans.

The Indian side, for example, has always maintained that the territory ‘‘illegally’’ ceded by Pakistan to China is a key element of any conversation it can have with China. While Beijing believes that any talks with New Delhi cannot be complete without stating that the McMahon Line that divides India and China in the east is ‘‘illegal’’, that Tawang and indeed all of Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of China.

It is to get away from this public posturing that the talks between the two Special Representatives are considered to be so crucial. Chinese spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said in Beijing today that ‘‘We hope that (the two sides will) would work on the framework of principles for the resolution of the border problem.’’