Modi-Xi summit to take bilateral ties to new heights

Beijing: The informal summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi later this year will take the bilateral relations to new heights but at the same time the two countries cannot let "individual" issues hurt their ties, Beijing's newly-appointed envoy to Delhi Sun Weidong has said.

Sun, who is headed to New Delhi on Saturday to take charge of his office, spoke to the Indian media in Beijing on a host of issues ranging from border dispute to trade deficit and US' trade war to the forthcoming informal summit between Xi and Modi.

"This year the two leaders are going to hold another informal meeting. I believe this will be the top priority in our bilateral relations which will surely scale our relations to new heights," Sun said in Beijing.

Modi and Xi are likely to meet in Indian city of Varanasi in October this year, which will their second informal meeting after the one in China's Wuhan last year.

"I think since the informal meeting between the two state leaders in Wuhan... China-India relations have now taken on a very good and sound momentum for development," Sun said.

The two Asian giants have a decades-long dispute over boundary over which they went to war in 1962. Besides that, several issues test the ties between the world's two most populous countries.

Sun, who is a former envoy to Pakistan and a South Asia expert, said China and India "will have to do more than just managing differences and take more initiative in shaping our relationship".

"I think we share very enormous potential for our cooperation and our shared interests far outweigh our differences.

That's why we need to focus on cooperation, make a bigger pie and narrow down the list of our problems and do not allow any individual case at a certain time to disrupt the development of our bilateral relations." It was unclear which "individual case" he was referring to.

The planned route of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor through disputed Kashmir, Beijing's opposition to New Delhi's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group and widening trade deficit are some of the key irritants in India and China ties.

On the boundary issue, Sun said that both sides will have to "accommodate each other's legitimate concerns so as to find the solution that is fair rationale and acceptable to both sides.

"We have signed an agreement on the political guidelines for the boundary question. We have also identified the basic principle of a package planned though mutual adjustment to resolve the boundary issue.