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China, Vietnam

end fresh round

of border talks

HANOI: Officials from China and Vietnam have ended a new round of negotiations on delimiting their land border, the Vietnamese communist party organ Nhan Dan said on Wednesday.

During the two-day talks in Beijing this week, the two sides discussed measures to stabilise border security in line with a bilateral agreement signed last year, it said.

Delimitation of the 1,130-kilometre (700-mile) land border has been the focus of talks aimed at signing a new agreement replacing a provisional one signed when China and Vietnam normalised their relations in 1991, Nhan Dan said.

During this week's talks, the two sides also agreed to speed up negotiations towards settling by this year end the delimitation of the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.

They also agreed to pursue talks on their disputes over the Spratly and Paracel island chains in the south China Sea, which the Vietnamese refer to as the Eastern Sea.ÑAFP