China would stop marking Sikkim as a separate country on its official foreign ministry website, Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibbal announced on Wednesday.
Beijing took this decision ahead of the meeting Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had with his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of the ongoing 9th ASEAN summit in Bali, Indonesia. This was Wen's second meeting with Vajpayee in three months after the Indian prime minister's landmark visit to China in June this year.
Earlier on Wednesday, Wen drove to the Bali Intercontinental Hotel where Vajpayee is staying. He termed their talks as the "most important one".
Repeatedly terming Vajpayee's June visit to China as "very successful," the Chinese prime minister said the boundary question needed to be resolved keeping in view long term and strategic perspectives. Wen voiced confidence that the remaining issues between the two countries could be resolved with "clear political determination" on both sides.
In Beijing, a senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official confirmed that Sikkim has been deleted (as a separate country) from the official website. "We removed it during the week-long National Day holidays," the official told PTI.
Earlier, the Chinese foreign ministry website had mentioned Sikkim as a separate country in Asia and had allocated a separate web page. It used to appear after Singapore in the list of countries. "The Chinese government does not recognise India's illegal annexation of Sikkim," a one-line statement used to say.
Describing the meeting as highly successful, Sibal said China assured that it would honour all the commitments made during Vajpayee's visit to that country in June this year.
He also announced that special political representatives of the two countries - National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra and senior Chinese Vice-Minister in the Foreign Ministry Dai Bingguo - would meet in Delhi on October 23 to hold talks on the vexed boundary issue.
When asked if any deadline has been fixed for resolving the border question with China, Sibal said, "One should never fix artificial deadlines" on the boundary issue as it has been in existence since the two countries became independent.
The issue had come to fore especially after the 1962 Sino-India conflict, he said adding the border question was now being looked at from a "political perspective."
He said the two leaders were unlikely to have discussed the Chinese intrusion in Arunachal Pradesh when the prime minister was visiting China, considering the "tone and content of the excellent" discussions. "Getting into complaints and nitty gritties would have been out of place," he said.
On clarifications regarding the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on the western sector, Sibal said, "they will continue. It is an ongoing process. An exchange of maps has taken place." Talks on the eastern sector would be taken up later.