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Indian PM Vajpayee to Visit
China June 22-27
BEIJING, June 12 (Reuters) - China said on Thursday
that Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will
visit from June 22 to June 27, the first trip to China
by an Indian leader in a decade.
``China is very encouraged by the current Sino-Indian
relationship,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan,
who announced the visit, told reporters.
``We have reasons to believe that through this visit
the Sino-Indian relationship will be promoted
beneficially,'' he said.
An Indian foreign ministry statement said Vajpayee
would hold talks with Premier Wen Jiabao and also meet
President Hu Jintao, Central Military Commission
Chairman Jiang Zemin and parliament chief Wu Bangguo,
among others.
It said besides Beijing, Vajpayee would visit Shanghai
and Luoyang city in the central Chinese province of
Henan.
``The visit is expected to contribute to developing
trust, understanding and confidence between India and
China,'' the statement said adding that a number of
agreements would be signed during the visit.
Vajpayee met Chinese President Hu Jintao for the first
time this month on the sidelines of the 300th
anniversary celebrations of St Petersburg, Russia's
former tsarist capital.
The Indian leader's visit to China is expected to cap
new efforts to foster friendship between the world's
two most populous nations which fought a brief border
war in 1962 and still have outstanding border
disagreements.
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