Friday January 12 6:56 PM ET
India, China Discuss Shared Boundary

NEW DELHI, India (AP) - India and China will address a long-standing dispute over a shared boundary in the barren Himalayan region and begin a security dialogue, the foreign ministry in New Delhi said Friday.

The boundary issue figured prominently in talks in New Delhi between Li Peng, the chairman of the Chinese People's National Congress, and President K.R Narayanan and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh.

Foreign ministry officials predicted that the dispute will take time to resolve. Both sides were considering more frequent meetings of expert groups to discuss the issue, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Li's eight-day-visit to India is aimed at promoting friendship and trust between the two countries, which fought a 21-day war in 1962. India and China have been holding talks since 1988 to settle the boundary dispute and signed agreements in 1993 and 1996 committing themselves to respecting existing cease-fire lines, pending an eventual solution.

India says China is illegally occupying 14,500 square miles which it seized during the war, in a northwestern region adjoining Kashmir state. Beijing says India is holding 36,000 square miles of Chinese territory in what is now the eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

At a reception held Friday to honor Li, he said President Narayanan's June visit to Beijing helped remove irritants that had cropped up in bilateral relations after India's nuclear tests in May 1998.

Li described his visit to India as very successful, paving the way for further friendship and cooperation.

``India has opened up and modernized. I see a lot of change here,'' Li was quoted as saying by the United News of India news agency. He last visited India in the early 1990s.

Heavy security was provided for Li in New Dehli. About 40 Tibetan protesters were arrested Thursday when they demonstrated near the Indian parliament building to protest China's occupation of Tibet.

Another 15 Tibetan protesters were arrested Friday when they tried to disrupt the Chinese leader's sight seeing tour of New Delhi. The protesters were whisked away before Li arrived.

Later Friday, Li met with opposition leader Sonia Gandhi for 20 minutes. He will meet Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Monday before leaving for Bangalore, India's information technology hub.

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Wednesday January 3 8:27 AM ET
Violence Flares on Israel-Lebanon Border

Reuters Photo

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Mortar bombs fired from Lebanon landed near an Israeli army frontier post in the disputed Shebaa Farms area Wednesday but caused no casualties or damage, an Israeli army spokesman said.

Israeli forces returned artillery fire, the spokesman said, describing the mortar bomb attack as ``a severe incident.''

It was not immediately clear who had fired the mortar bombs. The Lebanese Interior Ministry said security forces had found an abandoned mortar launcher on the Lebanese side and counted 50 shells that Israel launched in response, killing several sheep.

``There are doubts about who is behind this incident, which is an attempt to implicate Lebanon and justify Israeli attacks on liberated Lebanese areas,'' an interior ministry statement said.

Hizbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla movement still fighting to oust Israeli troops from Shebaa Farms, refused to comment.

Shebaa farms is situated at he foot of the Golan Heights which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel pulled its army out of southern Lebanon in May ending a 22-year-occupation, but Beirut and its political master Syria said the move was incomplete because it did not include Shebaa Farms.

The United Nations (news - web sites) however has declared the withdrawal complete and said the fate of Shebaa Farms should be a matter for future discussion between Syria and Israel as part of negotiations over the Golan.

Israeli officials have spoken of the possibility that Hizbollah might mount border attacks to force the Israeli army, battling a three-month-old Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites), to contend with a second front.

Reuters Photo
The latest border violence followed an incident Tuesday in which an Israeli construction worker further west along the frontier was wounded by a gunshot fired from Lebanon.

``We see the government of Lebanon as responsible for these incidents,'' said Israeli army spokesman Olivier Rafowicz.

The Lebanese government has ignored U.N. requests to send its army to establish security in the area, saying it will not serve as Israel's border guard.

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Sunday December 31 1:16 PM ET
Official Tours Tense Kosovo Border

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - The man likely to become prime minister of Yugoslavia's larger republic toured the tense region along the boundary with Kosovo on Sunday, telling local ethnic Albanians that they are equal citizens of the country but must respect its laws.
The visit by Zoran Djindjic to the volatile area comes a day after government officials and ethnic Albanian militants agreed to dismantle checkpoints on a key road and to refrain from violence.
The NATO (news - web sites)-mediated agreement reached Saturday has eased some of the tensions in the so-called Presevo Valley, where independence-minded ethnic Albanian rebels took control of several villages last month. Four Serb policemen were killed.
The militants want independence from Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic. They also want to join their political future with that of their ethnic kin in Kosovo, a province of Serbia.
There have been concerns that the clashes in southern Serbia could explode into violence similar to the conflict in Kosovo, which began when former President Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) cracked down on ethnic Albanians seeking independence.
The crackdown triggered the 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the deployment of the alliance's peacekeepers in the Serbian province.
A peace deal that ended the bombing campaign last year established a three-mile buffer zone between Kosovo and rest of Serbia. Serb special police and the Yugoslav army are banned from the area, allowing ethnic Albanian extremists to operate with impunity.
Djindjic visited both Serb police forces and local ethnic Albanian representatives in the tense village of Lucane, on the edge of the buffer zone. The police told Djindjic that rebel positions are only 500 feet away, but that the security forces will not intervene against them, the independent Beta new agency reported.
During his meeting with local ethnic Albanians, Djindjic told them that ``all citizens who respect the law of this country are equal citizens,'' Beta reported.
Djindjic, who is a key ally of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites), toured the region with Yugoslavia's top general, Nebojsa Pavkovic.
Djindjic played a key role in a nationwide pro-democracy movement earlier this year, which led to Milosevic's ouster. The new Serb government enjoys international support and has worked together with NATO in Kosovo to resolve the buffer zone crisis peacefully.
In the Kosovo capital of Pristina, the peacekeepers said they were ``encouraged by the attitude and flexibility displayed by all people concerned.''