January 04, 2008	Friday	Zilhaj 24, 1428

BEIJING: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit China later this month, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, as the Asian heavyweights grapple with issues from border disputes to competition for resources.

Singh will visit Jan. 13-15, his first trip to China as prime minister, with the two countries appearing far from resolving a long-running row over their Himalayan frontier that erupted into a brief war in 1962.

“We have had a fruitful exploration of the framework for resolving the issue,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said of the three rounds of talks on the issue last year.

“We will make joint efforts to try to find a fair and rational settlement that is acceptable to both countries,” she told a news conference.

Trade between the world’s two most populous nations boomed to $34.2 billion from January to November last year, up 54 per cent from the same period the previous year, Chinese figures show.

But despite growing trade ties, as Asia’s fastest growing economies, China and India are also in competition over everything from global influence to energy resources to water.—Reuters