India, China come closer, declare 2012 the "Year of India-China Friendship and Cooperation"

On the backdrop of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, India and China came closure to each other on Thursday and decided to enhance political trust for solving all outstanding issues including border dispute and trade imbalance.

To strengthen their bilateral relationship, both nations have decided to declare year 2012 as the "Year of India-China friendship and Cooperation". They formally lit an oil lamp to declare it.

At present both nations are growing at highest speed, even though they need to boost trade relations between duo to continue their speed. In this regard, both leaders have also decided to scale up their bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2015.

Currently the trade ties between India and China has touched US$70-billion mark but there is huge imbalance in it as the greater parts of this trade are dominated by China, so India has asked China to reduce this imbalance and asked China to allow accessing its market for Indian companies especially IT and pharmaceuticals.

The talk between the two lasted in an hour and they a range of bilateral issues as well as the need for closer coordination on global issues like climate change, the G20 and the Doha round of development negotiations.

In order to resolve boundary dispute, both leaders decided to give a political push. In this context, both leaders agreed that the mechanism of special representatives to resolve the boundary dispute should continue.

On the sidelines of the BRICS summit, Indian and Chinese officials are also understood to have held initial talks on firming up the mechanism of maritime cooperation that was decided during the visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi to India last month.

--With IANS Input--