The 11th round of talks between the Special Representatives of India and China was successful and they have decided to set up a Working Group to prepare a framework for the resolution of the boundary issue, Mukherjee told reporters after holding a 50-minute meeting here with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi.

"Let us wait for the recommendations of the Working Group," Mukherjee, who is in this northeast Chinese city to attend the third standalone trilateral meeting of Foreign Ministers of India, China and Russia, said.

The apparent progress on the boundary issue comes ahead of the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as that by Congress President Sonia Gandhi from today.

The 11th round of the Special Representative-level talks on India-China boundary question was held in Beijing from September 24-26.

The Special Representatives of the two countries, M. K. Narayanan, National Security Adviser, and Dai Bingguo, Vice Foreign Minister, held "useful and positive" discussions on the framework for the settlement of the India-China boundary question, the Indian side had said in a positive evaluation of the talks last month.

The unresolved Sino-Indian boundary issue has hampered the normal development of bilateral ties, with frequent reports of incursions, hurting the overall relations.
Director General of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, General V K Joshi had said on Tuesday that over 140 incursions have been reported along the Indo-Chinese border stretching from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh over the past year.

Unable to find a negotiated settlement through diplomatic channels, India and China appointed Special Representatives in June 2003 to address the border issue from a political perspective of the overall bilateral relations.

India says China is illegally occupying 43,180 sq kms of Jammu and Kashmir including 5,180 sq km illegally ceded to Beijing by Islamabad under the Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement in 1963. On the other hand, China accuses India of possessing some 90,000 sq km of Chinese territory, mostly in Arunachal Pradesh.

Meanwhile, the meeting between Mukherjee and Yang also touched upon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's planned visit to China, External Affairs Ministry spokesman, Navtej Sarna said.

The meeting reviewed the preparations for the Prime Minister's visit, he said.

Mukherjee and Yang also looked at the possibilities of increasing bilateral trade which has been galloping at over 30 per cent in recent times. However, China has enjoyed a growing trade surplus with India running into over four billion US dollars in the first six months of this year, causing concern in New Delhi.