China hope to sign border deal this month
HANOI - Vietnam and China have concluded
negotiations on their disputed land border and hope to sign a
formal agreement by the year-end, officials said on Friday.
A statement from the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry said all major
issues had been resolved during the current visit of Chinese
Premier Zhu Rongji to Hanoi, but that some technical matters
still needed to be settled.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao told a news
conference in Hanoi that actual negotiations had finished on the
matter, which officials have said involved some 70 areas long
disputed by the socialist neighbors.
Zhu Rongji arrived in Vietnam on Wednesday after touring other
southeast Asian nations and was to leave on Saturday.
Spokesman Zhu said the premier and his Vietnamese hosts had
also exchanged views on Beijing's recent deal with the United
States that opens the way for China to join the World Trade
Organization.
However, he said Hanoi's leaders expressed no special interest
in China's deal.
Vietnamese Communist Party and other financial sources had
previously said Vietnam's leaders would have many questions
for Zhu over Beijing's WTO agreement.
Hanoi has debated the merits of signing its own trade pact with
Washington, and has hesitated because conservative party
elements fear the loss of control such a deal would bring.
Vietnam and China have a long history of animosity despite their
ideological and cultural similarities, but Hanoi has closely
watched China's economic reforms in the past 20 years.
Spokesman Zhu said the two sides reiterated their desire to also
solve territorial issues in the Tonkin Gulf, which lies off northern
Vietnam and southern China, by next year.
The two also have competing claims in two South China Sea
archipelagoes -- the Spratly and Paracel island chains -- but the
Chinese spokesman did not say if these issues had been
discussed in detail.
Reuters - december 3, 1999.
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