China said on Tuesday it was willing to work with India to stabilise bilateral relations “at an early date” ahead of rare high-level talks this week on a decades-long border dispute.

The world’s two most populous nations are intense geopolitical rivals and have accused each other of trying to seize territory along their unofficial divide, known as the Line of Actual Control.

Their shared 3,500-kilometre frontier has been a perennial source of tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

This week’s talks on the issue would be the first in five years, signalling a possible thaw in ties.

A spokesperson for Beijing’s foreign ministry said China was willing to “work with India to implement the important consensus reached by the two countries’ leaders”.

Beijing would look to “enhance mutual trust through dialogue and communication, properly handle differences with sincerity and good faith, and push bilateral relations back to a stable and healthy track of development at an early date”, spokesperson Lin Jian said.

Relations plummeted after a brutal skirmish in 2020 high in their Himalayan borderlands that killed at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers.

However, New Delhi said in October it had reached an agreement with Beijing on patrols in disputed areas. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a rare formal meeting soon after.

Beijing said on Monday Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet with Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Wednesday to discuss the “China-India boundary question”.

India’s foreign ministry said the pair would discuss “the management of peace and tranquillity in the border areas and explore a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the boundary question”.

The talks will be held under a 2003 framework created to handle the border issue. The last such meeting took place in December 2019, according to Indian media.

China and India fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962.