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)
