Vietnam, China sign landmark border pact

HANOI, DECEMBER 30: Vietnam and China signed an historic 11th-hour land border treaty here on Thursday more than two decades after the two...

HANOI, DECEMBER 30: Vietnam and China signed an historic 11th-hour land border treaty here on Thursday more than two decades after the two Communist neighbours clashed in 1979.

Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan inked the accord with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Manh Cam in the International Centre in a signing ceremony attended by diplomats, journalists and government officials.

It fulfilled a mutual pledge to reach an agreement before 2000, first mooted by then Vietnamese Communist party general secretary Do Muoi during a visit to Beijing in 1997, and reiterated by his successor, Le Kha Phieu.

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The agreement settles all outstanding border disputes along the two countries’ common 1,200 km border, eight years after normal relations were re-established in 1991, ending more than 11 years of diplomatic frost following a bloody border clash in February-March 1979.

The border deal is perhaps more geopolitically significant than practically as the highly porous border sees more than one billion dollars worth of illegal trade each year.

"This demonstrates that when secretary generals set a deadline, the cadres of both sides have to meet it," said Carl Thayer, a professor and expert in Sino-Vietnamese relations in the Asia Pacific centre for security studies in Honolulu.