Border dispute should not affect India-China ties: China

The Special Representatives of India and China, who concluded the 14th round of talks to resolve the boundary dispute on November 30 agreed to "proceed with the fundamental interests" of the two nations to find a "reasonable and acceptable" solution under the spirit of political guidelines, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said.

"Chinese and Indian leaders have expressed on many occasions that the boundary issue should not affect the overall interests of the bilateral relations," she said, answering a question about the progress of the talks between National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and his Chinese counterpart Dai Bingguo.

She referred to joint statement after the meeting which stated that the talks ended with a "joint pledge to seek a fair and reasonable solution acceptable to both sides".After the talks, Menon said that the border talks were making steady progress to resolve the dispute.

India-China share over 4000 km boundary and the focal point of the dispute is Aksai Chin in the Ladakh sector and Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as Southern Tibet.

This year's border talks assumed special significance as they took place ahead of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to India scheduled to take place later this month.

The visit coming after a series of meetings including the one between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Wen at Hanoi last month was expected to address mutual concerns, specially the Indian concerns relating to the issuance of stapled visas to residents of Jammu and Kashmir.Menon and Dai also discussed the resumption of the defence exchanges to put the relations back on track.