NEW DELHI -- For 25 years, India has been seeking to settle by negotiation with China the disputed Indo-Tibetan frontier. Yet, not only have the negotiations yielded no concrete progress on a settlement, but they also have failed so far to remove even the ambiguities plaguing the long line of control.
Beijing has been so loath to clearly define the 4,057-km frontline that it suspended the exchange of maps with India several years ago. Consequently, India and China remain the only countries in the world not separated by a mutually defined frontline. By contrast, the Indo-Pakistan frontier is an international border, except in Kashmir, where there is a line of control that has been both clearly defined and delineated.
The latest round of Sino-Indian border negotiations ended in Beijing last week in predictable fashion -- with warm handshakes and a promise to meet again. But after a quarter century of unrewarding negotiations with Beijing, India ought to face up to the reality that it is being taken round and round the mulberry bush by an adversarial state that has little stake in an early border resolution.