GUWAHATI, India – Officials from India and China are scheduled to meet in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa at the weekend to finalize dates to reopen trade along the ancient Silk Road, an official said.
A six-member Indian commerce ministry delegation will hold talks with Chinese counterparts Saturday in Lhasa to renew trade over the 15,000-feet (4,545-metre) Nathu La Pass between India’s northeast Sikkim state and China’s Tibet region suspended since a 1962 border war.
“The meeting is primarily aimed at deciding a mutually convenient date for starting border trading at Nathu La,” Saman Prasad Subba, Sikkims industries director, told AFP by telephone from the state capital Gangtok.
“We expect trading to begin very soon,” Subba said on Tuesday.
In May, India’s junior trade minister Jairam Ramesh said he expected trading to start in July 2006, three years after an agreement to open the pass.
India and China — the world’s most populous countries — have pushed for greater trade to tap a total consumer market of 2.3 billion people.
Bilateral trade now is running at around 14 billion dollars annually.
Nathu La was a major trading point between India and China before the brief but bloody border war and was also one of the main arteries of the Silk Road which historically linked China via Central Asia to Europe.
Initial trade is expected to include many of the same goods that traditionally passed along the old Silk Road. Chinese exports will include silk and raw wool, while Indian exports are expected to include farm products, textiles and shoes.
Last May, the neighbours agreed that previously disputed Sikkim belonged to India and said they would work to resolve other border issues.
India says China occupies 38,000 square kilometres (14,670 square miles) of Indian territory. Beijing claims the remote Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.
