Sikkim falls off China yearbook

Significantly, both Mishra and Dai are said to have in principle agreed to reach some conclusions on the guidelines and parameters of the boundary settlement, even before Chinese premier Wen Jiabao visits India later this year.

While both sides continue to maintain silence on the quality and content of the talks, they said the removal of Sikkim as an independent state from the Chinese yearbook constitutes the second step in the process agreed upon when PM Vajpayee visited China last summer. The first was to delete the Sikkim mention from the Chinese foreign ministry website in October. The last step in the process will occur when Beijing changes its maps in accordance with those printed by cartographers worldwide.

Mishra, who went to Beijing for the second round of talks in January — only days after he returned from the India-Pakistan summit in Islamabad — was also hosted by Dai in his home city of Guiyang in Guizhou province.

As they took a boatride down the local river, went sightseeing to Buddhist temples and checked out underground grottoes in the area, the ambience is believed to have helped prolong their conversations in ‘‘mutually advantageous directions’’, the sources said.

The diplomatic sources also pointed to recent ‘‘signals’’ that indicated a thaw in bilateral relations. Such as the broadcast by the government-owned Chinese television, of Chinese ambassador to India Hua Junduo’s New Year party in the third week of January (it was broadcast over and over again) before that of France, as well as telecast by CCTV of Indian cultural performances.