NEW DELHI, Oct 8: China on Wednesday announced that it had removed the Himalayan state of Sikkim from the list of regional countries on its official website, a haltingly incremental move but one hailed by New Delhi as a major breakthrough.

The announcement seemed to fall way short of an official recognition of Sikkim as part of India but it showed Beijing’s intent nevertheless. It came at a meeting between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao in Bali on the sidelines of the ASEAN-related activities, Indian news reports said.

The two prime ministers also directed their special representatives on bilateral issues — India’s National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra and Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo — to meet in New Delhi on October 23 to unravel their bitter boundary dispute that led to a brief war in 1962.

Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal told reporters in Bali that the Chinese prime minister conveyed to Mr Vajpayee that Sikkim was removed from the website a day before their meeting and that Beijing would honour all the promises it had made to Mr Vajpayee during his visit to China in June.

Sikkim used to figure as a separate country on China’s website alphabetically alongside Singapore in the list of regional countries. Mr Sibal said the China had earlier conveyed to India that it would “amend” the website before the two prime ministers met in Bali.

He showed to the media a copy of the “amended” website’s printout downloaded from the internet.

Asked if China had also amended its official “World Map”, Mr Sibal said he had no information on the matter.

In June this year Mr Vajpayee was on an official visit to Beijing and Shanghai when Chinese troops had reportedly crossed across the Line of Actual Control straddling the northeastern Indian state of Arunchal Pradesh, which is disputed by China.

India acknowledges that this is an area where there are differences in the perception of the LAC between the two sides.

Despite their lingering differences over key areas of their Himalayan border, both sides did move close to sorting out the less complex dispute over Chinese-ruled Tibet and the Indian state of Sikkim during Mr Vajpayee’s visit last month.

India accuses China of occupying 38,000 square kilometres of territory in Kashmir while Beijing lays claim to 90,000 square kilometres — effectively all of Arunchal Pradesh.