India, China capable enough about readdressing boundary issue: Menon

New Delhi, Apr 1 (ANI): National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon Thursday said both India and China are confident enough about readdressing the boundary issue, which is a most complicated and difficult one, affecting bilateral relations.

Addressing a seminar on "India and China: Public Diplomacy, Building Understanding," organised to mark the 60th anniversary of the Indo-China diplomatic ties, Menon said: "Both countries were confident enough to re-address the most complicated and difficult issue that affects bilateral relations, the India-China boundary question, at the political level.

"It was decided to entrust the issue to Special Representatives of the leaders" he added.

Menon's statement came just days before External Affairs Minister S M Krishna's Beijing visit.

During Krishna's Beijing visit from April 5, both sides are likely to discuss dates for the 14th round of boundary negotiations between their Special Representatives.

Menon further said both countries have found ways to solve the boundary issue.

"The two countries have found a modus vivendi to deal with the fact of the boundary issue and to manage their different approaches to issues where their peripheries overlap," he said.

In his address, Menon stressed that India and China can now consider the next steps in the evolution of bilateral ties.

"Both countries can now actively consider together the next steps in the evolution of our bilateral relations; evolve a detailed framework for the resolution of the boundary issue in a manner that is politically feasible for both leaderships; and, seize the opportunities for cooperation that the domestic transformations of our economies and the evolving global situation have opened up," he said.

Menon said beginning with Foreign Minister Vajpayee's 1979 visit to China and culminating in Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's visit to China in 1988, Indian and Chinese leaders decided that difficult and complicated boundary question would be addressed, "but would not stand in the way of the expansion of relations in other areas, including the economy and functional cooperation."

Acknowledging that there are differences on many issues between India and China, Menon underlined the need for building congruences between both countries, while managing differences.

"Differences in worldview, structure, systems and foreign policy making have not prevented and will not prevent an expanding engagement between India and China," he said. (ANI)