By Dipankar De Sarkar
London, Nov 9 (IANS) Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said he does not visualise the border dispute between India and China flaring up into a conflict.

If anything, trade between the two countries is “expanding very fast” and development work on the Indian side of the border was “catching up” with the Chinese, he said Sunday.

“I do not visualise any conflict on the border dispute between India and China. We have an institutional arrangement. Though there are divergences of views but, in the form of the special representatives of the prime ministers of both countries, they meet regularly - up to now more than a dozen meetings have taken place,” Mukherjee told journalists.

“There has been some agreement on the guiding principles and political parameters, but the actual resolution of the dispute is yet to take place,” he said.

“The development on the border (on the Chinese side) is superior to that of ours but we have started catching up. The Prime Minister has announced a package of development in the border areas, both in the western and the eastern sectors,” he added.

Mukherjee said although India and China “are having differences in respect of alignment of borders”, they have agreed on two “basic principles” which were last reiterated during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao at the ASEAN summit in Thailand last month.

“Both prime ministers agreed to maintain peace and tranquillity on the border and our economic cooperation, particularly trade, which is expanding very fast,” he said, replying to a barrage of questions on India’s relations with China.