'Only give-and-take policy will solve Sino-Indian rows'

With India-China boundary negotiations gaining momentum ahead of high-level visits, prominent Chinese scholars have urged New Delhi to start "educating" the Indian public that a mutually acceptable solution cannot be based on the 1962 resolution of Parliament.

"A mutually acceptable solution to the Sino-Indian  boundary issue can only be based on the principles of  "give and take" and "mutual adjustments" and not on the basis of the 1962 resolution of the Indian Parliament," former Chinese Ambassador to India Zhou Gang said.

With the Chinese and Indian Special Representatives making progress in their negotiations, it is time that the Indian government starts educating people on the principles of border Sino-Indian boundary negotiations, Zhou, who was the Chinese Ambassador in India from 1998 to 2001, said.

Zhou, now a special consultant to the Chinese foreign ministry, noted that as early as 1988 when the late Rajiv Gandhi visited China, late Deng Xiaoping had enunciated the principles for settling the Sino-Indian boundary issue in the spirit of mutual understanding and mutual accommodation.

Beijing and New Delhi have agreed that there had to be give and take in resolving the boundary dispute. Those mutual concessions will have to be worked out on the basis of a broad set of political guiding principles in the coming rounds of boundary talks between the two special representatives, Zhou said.

Zhou's comments came as the special representatives of  India and China, National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and Chinese vice foreign minister, Dai Bingguo concluded their 11th round of border negotiations on Wednesday.

The latest round of negotiations were held as New Delhi and Beijing were preparing for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to China as well as that of Congress president Sonia Gandhi in the coming months.

As in the past rounds of talks, details of their negotiations were not released. But a brief press statement said Narayanan and Dai held "useful and positive discussions on the framework for the settlement of the India-China boundary question".

Another leading Chinese scholar on South Asian issues, Professor Sun Shihai, Deputy Director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, an elite think tank of the government, also stressed that the Indian government has to create a "positive" public opinion on the final settlement of the Sino-Indian boundary issue.