Far East: India and China have signed 11 agreements, including a significant one that aims at providing the framework to resolve a boundary dispute which has soured relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours for more than four decades.
"The differences on the boundary question should not be allowed to affect the overall development of bilateral relations," declared the territorial agreement finalised in New Delhi yesterday following a meeting between visiting Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh.
The boundary dispute sparked a brief but bitter border conflict in 1962 in which India came off worse.
The fighting also soured relations between the world's two most populous countries till the late 1980s, when they began slowly but steadily to improve.
India claims China is in illegal occupation of 38,000sq km of the Aksi Chin area bordering Tibet since the 1950s and of a large swathe of territory in the disputed Kashmir province which was illegally ceded to Beijing by Pakistan in 1963.
China, in turn, claims ownership of some 90,000sq km which comprises India's northeastern Arunachal Pradesh province adjoining Tibet.
A formal border demarcation, however, has yet to be established in place of the nebulous line of actual control.
However the unsettled frontier has remained largely peaceful following the Sino-Indian "peace and tranquillity" agreements of 1993 and 1996 which led to a marked de-escalation of military deployment on both sides of the border.
A joint working group comprising cartographers, military personnel and diplomats was established in the late 1980s to try and resolve the territorial dispute and though it met 15 times, alternating between Delhi and Beijing, it achieved nothing.
"The two sides will resolve the boundary question through peaceful and friendly consultations. Neither side shall use or threaten to use force against the other by any means," declared the agreement signed by India's national security adviser, MK Narayanan and China's vice-foreign minister, Dai Bingguo.
The two are politically empowered special representatives appointed by each side to settle the boundary issue.
"For the first time we see a commonality on both sides to find a solution," Mr Narayanan said but on a note of caution added that it was too early to predict what settlement the neighbours would eventually reach.
Besides the boundary dispute, accords were also concluded on trade and cultural ties, on economic co-operation and aviation links. The two sides want to expand bilateral trade, currently at about $14 billion, to $25 billion over the next five years.