India and China will look for ways to promote military relations and bury distrust during the first visit by a Chinese defence minister in a decade this week, officials said on Sunday.
Relations between the world's most populous countries, which went to war in 1962, have improved in recent years on the back of booming trade but an unsettled Himalayan border and nuclear proliferation in the region remain stumbling blocks.
"We both have concerns, these talks are aimed at making sure there are no misperceptions in the leadership of the countries," said an Indian defence ministry official. The two sides will discuss new confidence building measures along the 3,500-km (2,170-mile) border and greater military exchanges in the talks between Chinese Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan and his Indian counterpart George Fernandes.
Cao reached India on Friday but official talks begin only from Monday, officials said.
New Delhi has repeatedly expressed concerned about what it says are Chinese missile transfers to traditional ally Pakistan, a charge dismissed by both Islamabad and Beijing.
China in turn was incensed when New Delhi, citing regional threat perceptions, carried out underground nuclear explosions in May 1998.
Pakistan answered India's tests with explosions of its own and since then both have declared themselves nuclear weapon states.
"There are several contentious issues between India and China, which will not go away overnight," said Srikanth Kondapalli, a China expert at New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. "Both realise you need top level political contacts."
Last year, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee made a first visit to China by an Indian premier in a decade during which the two sides named top-level envoys for a speedy resolution of four-decade-old border dispute, considered central to ties.
Vajpayee has simultaneously launched what he said was his final bid for peace with Pakistan, which Beijing has supported.
Shortly after Vajpayee's ground-breaking visit to China last year, Indian naval ships held for the first time low level exercises with the Chinese navy off Shanghai.
Kondapalli said New Delhi would be looking to scale up the naval exercises from the search and rescue manoeuvres that were conducted in October and expand it to the armies and air forces of the giant neighbours.
Defence Minister Cao, who also travelled to Pakistan, will visit the Indian western naval command in Bombay, an aircraft factory in Bangalore and an air force station in Agra.
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