NEW DELHI, Nov 21: Indian officials said on Thursday they had made headway with China on a dragging border dispute during comprehensive talks here.

After the discussions Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal, the highest-ranked bureaucrat in the foreign ministry who led the Indian team, said he was satisfied.

“We have reached a reasonable understanding on how to deal with this matter and on how to move forward,” he said.

“Both sides felt that hurdles should be overcome in the complicated exercise of delineating the Line of Actual Control,” Sibal said of a heavily-militarized boundary separating disputed territories.

Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha also said he was encouraged by Thursday’s developments.

“The talks were positive and satisfactory,” he added, as Indian official sources said the talks “focused on various aspects of the boundary dispute with both sides keen to sort out differences relating to the western sector of their border”.

The Chinese side was headed in the talks by vice foreign minister Wang Yi.

Indian foreign ministry spokesman Navtaj Sarna said the scheduled two rounds of border talks between officials of a Sino-Indian Joint Working Group (JWG) had led to a third round on Thursday evening.

He declined to elaborate on whether the two sides also discussed widely-expected issues such as the situation in Iraq and terrorism.

The current discussions are the 14th round of the JWG’s annual meetings.

Previous talks have failed to untie the knot on their border dispute.—AFP