Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will visit China next month, Defence Minister George Fernandes said on Monday.
He said that Beijing and New Delhi were working towards ensuring permanent peace along the 9,000 km-long Sino-Indian border. "For the last three years there has not been a bullet fired across the high Himalayan frontiers between China and India," Fernandes said.
Indicating that India wanted 'trouble free' Eastern as well as North Eastern borders, Fernandes referring to his recent visit to China said, "Chinese leaders also want friendship with India."
Fernandes was addressing the two-day conference of general managers of the ordnance factories.
Vajpayee will be the first prime minister after P V Narasimha Rao to visit China in over a decade. During the 1993 visit of Narasimha Rao, India and China had concluded the historic agreement for peace and tranquillity on the Sino-Indian border.