Russian-Chinese Border Talks

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32018, 19 June 1969, Page 17

Russian-Chinese Border Talks

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) HONG KONG, June 18. Russian and Chinese representatives are due to meet in the Far Eastern Soviet town of Khabarovsk today for talks on navigation along their troubled frontier rivers.

In Moscow, the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s press chief (Mr Leonid Zamyatin) said: “The Soviet side will take a positive and constructive position.” China announced on June 7 that it had accepted a Russian proposal to meet in Khabarovsk (which the Chinese call Poll) and that a Chinese delegation of 10 members would take part in the talks. But since then official Chinese news media have not mentioned the talks and there has been no word about the departure of the delegation. The meeting is the fifteenth regular meeting of the two countries’ joint commission for navigation on boundary rivers, set up 18 years ago. It last met in the Chin-

ese city of Harbin in 1967, and China then blamed Russia for its “fruitless outcome.”

There has been no indication that the talks will go beyond questions of river navigation, in spite of the bitter frontier disputes of recent months.

Last Saturday, Russia delivered a Note to the Chinese Embassy in Moscow, proposing that border demarcation talks, broken off in Peking in 1964, should be resumed in the Soviet capital within the next two or three months. The Note accused China of continuing border provocations, and demanded that these be stopped while a date for talks on the border dispute was fixed through diplomatic channels.