Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday said the broad principles for resolving the border dispute with China will be in place before Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's official visit to India next year.

Speaking to reporters on his way back after the third summit between India and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Vientiane, Laos, the prime minister, however, added the process of actual resolution will be gradual.

Referring to his talks with Wen on the margins of the summit Tuesday, Singh said the two heads of government had agreed that the border talks, while progressing well, should not hinder expansion of ties in other areas.

"There is still a vast untapped potential," he quoted Wen as telling him after their first meeting since the Congress party-led government came to power in May. He was speaking to the accompanying media on board his special aircraft.

Singh said he and Wen noted that much progress had been made during the two rounds of talks on the border issue between India's Special Representative and National Security Advisor J.N. Dixit and his Chinese counterpart Dai Bingguo.

"I hope by the time the Chinese premier comes to India, the special representatives would have arrived on the broad principles of resolving the border issue," he said.

Asked how long he expected the process of actual reconciliation would take, Manmohan Singh said: "It is impossible for me to try and fix a timeframe. It takes two to resolve a problem."

Yet, the outcome of the meeting in Vientiane was a realisation on the two sides that the political leadership had an obligation to resolve all differences.

Singh said he raised the issue of Sikkim with Wen and told him that the progress in the commitment made by the Chinese in this regard was slow. "But the Chinese prime minister told me 'We stand by our commitment on Sikkim'."

On the issue of Tibet, an assurance was given to the Chinese side that there was no ambiguity in India's stand on the issue.

According to Manmohan Singh, Wen also said during the talks that his forthcoming visit to India sometime next year would be the most important engagement for him in 2005.

Earlier, Dixit told reporters there was no reference to Pakistan during the Manmohan Singh-Wen meeting, adding: "There was no mutual paranoia on Pakistan."

According to Dixit, the Chinese premier hoped there would be some positive signals sent to the world when he visits New Delhi.

Wen noted that relations between India and China that went back several centuries were 99.99 percent good and that aberrations were only in 0.1 percent of the ties, Dixit said.

The two leaders discussed the potential for economic cooperation between the two countries. Singh noted that Sino-India bilateral trade currently stood at a low level of $12 billion annually, to which Wen said the potential was $100 billion.

--Indo-Asian News Service