Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi met with his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday, and the two sides vowed to further step up cooperation and continuously enhance relationship between the two countries.

China would make joint efforts with India under relevant political guiding principles and hoped the two countries could understand each other, make mutual concessions and adjustments so as to strive for an early agreement on a framework which would be fair, rational and acceptable for both sides on resolving bilateral border issue, said Yang.

Yang said that China would firmly support the Chinese and Indian special representatives' work on resolving bilateral border issue.

Yang said, thanks to the concerted efforts by both sides, bilateral ties have maintained healthy development. He said the Chinese and Indian special representatives have held their eleventh meeting on bilateral border issue, and the first meeting under a China-India expert mechanism on cross-border river issues was held in Beijing.

The economic and trade cooperation between China and India achieved new progress and bilateral trade volume was expected to exceed US$30 billion for the whole of 2007, Yang said, highlighting that the strategic cooperation between the two countries would enjoy wide prospect and bright future.

The development of China and India and the improving China-India relations had become one of the most outstanding changes of the international situation, Yang said, stressing that without the development and prosperity of the two countries and their close cooperation on international affairs, there would be no harmonious Asia or a harmonious world.

Yang emphasized that the keeping high-level exchanges and enhancing dialogue and consultations would be of significant importance in promoting the development of China-India relations.

He said that this bilateral meeting between the two countries' foreign ministers was the fourth one in only half a year and fully reflected the close bilateral relationship and the great attention paid by the two countries on bilateral ties.

China was willing to join hands with India to develop bilateral ties with a strategic and long-term perspective and continuously enrich and step up the strategic and cooperative partnership between the two countries, Yang added.

Mukherjee appreciated China's efforts in successfully organizing the China-Russia-India foreign ministers' meeting.

Mukherjee gave positive comments on bilateral ties, saying on the basis of the five principles of peaceful coexistence, India and China smoothly developed their ties, conducted frequent high-level exchanges, steadily pushed forward economic and trade cooperation, and continuously made progress in resolving bilateral border issue through the special representative mechanism.

Noting the enhanced cooperation between India and China was not only conducive to the regional peace and stability, but also conducive to world peace and prosperity at large, the Indian foreign minister said India was ready to make joint efforts with China to deepen mutual understanding, mutually beneficial cooperation and continuously enhance the relationship between the two countries.

The two foreign ministers also exchanged views on how to appropriately solve the Myanmar issue.

The Chinese and Indian foreign ministers were in Harbin for a China-Russia-India meeting of foreign ministers. The trilateral meeting held on Wednesday afternoon was the seventh attended by foreign ministers of the three countries since 2002.

(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2007)