NEW DELHI, February 1. /TASS/. Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj begins an official visit to China on Sunday. At the visit she should meet Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, President Xi Jinping and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The foreign ministers of India and China will talk bilateral partnership, issues on regional and global agenda which concern the two countries, Indian Foreign Ministry said before the visit.
Negotiators are expected to discuss Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s possible forthcoming visit to China. The visit was not announced officially yet, but it may take place already in September 2015.
On February 2, Swaraj is due to participate in a meeting of foreign ministers of Russia, India and China and to have eye-on-eye talks with Sergey Lavrov. India did not give any comments which issues will be raised at meetings.
Russia has put forward an idea of trilateral partnership between Russia, India and China in 1998.
Meetings between foreign ministers of the three countries on the sidelines of UN General Assembly sessions in New York in 2003 to 2005 and a ministerial meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in October 2004 in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city.
Presently co-operation between the three countries is developing on five guidelines, namely the creation of a common bank of knowledge, industry and trade, agriculture, clean-up of natural disaster aftermath and health care services.
Former Indian ambassador in China and the United States Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who was appointed as deputy foreign minister on January 29, will accompany Swaraj at the working trip. For both this visit in Beijing will be the first one as deputy foreign minister and foreign minister, respectively.
Swaraj’s trip will be the first visit to China as the Indian minister after the new government came to power at general parliamentary elections in May 2014. Xi Jinping has already paid a visit to New Delhi in September 2014. Then the countries agreed to settle the border dispute as quickly as possible, as this problem remains one of acutest issues in bilateral ties.
China and India are in intensive talks on border problems. In 2013, the two countries have inked a deal on military border co-operation destined to ease tension on the Line of Actual Control, a demarcation line between the two countries which is the de facto border. The accord envisages regular meetings at the level of commanders of military operations carried out by military forces of the two states and measures to prevent invasions into the two countries.
The Line of Actual Control stretches at more than four thousand kilometres. In 1996, the two states signed an accord which bars both countries from taking any action to revise the deal.
Trade and economic partnership should become another important issue for talks. Five Year Trade and Economic Development Plan which Jinping and Modi signed upon the results of talks said that China plans to invest $20 billion in Indian economy within five years.
Fifteen documents were signed during the Chinese leader’s visit to India. The accords particularly plan a procedure to ponder bilateral co-operation to build high speed railways in India.