National Security Adviser Ajit Doval with China's Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi. (PTI File)

New Delhi: National Security Adviser Ajit Doval is scheduled to visit Beijing on Monday for talks on the boundary issue with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, even as New Delhi hopes Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit India for the BRICS Summit next month.

Doval and Wang, the designated Special Representatives (SRs) for the India-China boundary talks, are scheduled to hold the 25th round of SR talks on Tuesday, according to news agency reports from Beijing.
The SR mechanism was established in 2003 to comprehensively address the long-running boundary dispute between India and China along their 3,488-km border.
Doval and Wang last held a bilateral meeting two months ago on the sidelines of the BRICS NSAs Meeting in New Delhi. The two sides reviewed developments in bilateral relations and noted progress towards the gradual normalisation of ties.
New Delhi had said Doval underlined that stable, predictable and constructive bilateral relations would contribute to building trust and better understanding between the two countries. The discussions were described as constructive and forward-looking.
Although the SR talks over the past two decades have not resolved the boundary dispute, officials on both sides regard the mechanism as important for preventing tensions along the border.
Ahead of the Beijing talks, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar on Saturday reiterated that peace and tranquillity along the border were prerequisites for good relations with China.
“I think we went through a particularly bad patch between the summer of 2020 and the autumn of 2024, and that was primarily an outcome of the situation in the border areas,” Jaishankar said.
He said the state of the border would, to a large extent, determine the state of bilateral relations.
His remarks came amid reports of increased Chinese military activity near the Arunachal Pradesh border. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun had on August 12 said that the India-China border situation was “generally stable at the moment”.
India and China also held the 36th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on China-India Border Affairs earlier this month. The two sides agreed to maintain communication through diplomatic and military channels and jointly uphold peace and tranquillity in the border areas, according to Beijing.
MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had on August 11 said India viewed matters concerning the border with China with the “utmost seriousness” and stressed that maintaining peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control was crucial to the overall trajectory of bilateral ties.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi had met in August last year on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin.


Tags: