Border row to be settled soon

Singh, Wen sign understanding, Joint working group will continue

What exactly does the agreement on political parameters and guiding principles for the settlement of the Sino-Indian boundary issue mean?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao initialled an understanding reached earlier between the National Security Adviser MK Naray-anan and his equivalent on the Chinese side Dai Bingguo that is expected to work around one level of border negotiations and raise it to another level.

Thus the expectation is that work on resolving the border dispute will now progress faster. Whether it will and ultimately succeed in settling the matter is another question altogether.

After the 1962 war in which India was comprehensively defeated, a number of disputed pockets on the border were left behind as a legacy of the war, mainly where the tactical advantage on the ground accrued to one or the other party.

In the western sector "" that is Aksai Chin""the Chinese laid claim to three points. Aksai China was crucial because it offered a road link from Sinkiang to Tibet. In the central sector there were no significant differences and actually no outstanding problems remain. In the eastern sector, that is Arunachal Pradesh, India claims Tawang as Indian territory. Sikkim was added to the dispute later after it became part of India.

Till the mid 1960s, the negotiating principle was: concessions in the east for concessions in the west. A set of principles was spelt out that became the bottom line for negotiations "" the guiding principle was mutual understanding and mutual adjustment.

All this related to the negotiation on what was called the Line of Actual Control (LAC), a territory actually controlled by either country.

After Rajiv Gandhi's breakthrough trip in 1988, maps were exchanged for the central sector where there is virtually no dispute "" the LAC has virtually been accepted as the border.

However, even maps have not been exchanged yet for the other two sectors""the west and the east"" indicating that neither side has managed to convince the other about the sovereignty of the territory held by its frontline troops.

In the midst of this, after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to China two years ago, former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra and his Chinese counterpart Dai Bingguo were named as special representatives to address the boundary issue at a political level.

It is as a result of those negotiations that the current set of guiding principles have been spelt out in the agreement signed today.

These include, for instance, historical evidence, national sentiments, practical difficulties and reasonable concerns and sensitivities of both sides, and the actual state of border areas as guiding principles.

Geographical contiguity is another. The two sides will give due consideration to each other's strategic and reasonable interests, and the principle of mutual and equal security, the agreement says. Thus, instead of the piecemeal sectoral work on the border, now, these principles will rule.

But the agreement makes it clear that the joint working group that has been enjoined with the task of delineating the LAC on the ground, will continue to work.

Therefore, two efforts will carry on in the parallel with the unwritten understanding that whichever set of negotiators reaches a conclusion first will wait for the other one to catch up.

What this really means is that China has put one kind of negotiation on the back burner and opened another set. Both India and China have the choice of opting for the conclusion of whichever set of negotiations that is in their favour at a particular point.

Therefore, while the political intervention by the special representatives has been sanctified as leapfrogging one set of negotiations, it has actually added another layer.