INDIA: Ready to Talk

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After months of exchanging crusty letters over the India-Red China border dispute, Red China's Chou En-lai last week accepted Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's invitation to come to New Delhi to talk about it. In a letter oozing good will, Chou said that because of state business he could not go in March, when invited, but he would go in April. He was, said Chou, grateful for Nehru's "friendly invitation," and hoped to "see the dark clouds hovering between our two countries dispersed through our joint efforts."

Though Chou conceded nothing, New Delhi optimists believe that Red China is at last concerned over its deteriorating popularity in Asia, and some thought they could guess the kind of bargain Chou hoped to strike. Red China recently settled its border dispute with Burma by abandoning its claims to Burmese territory south of the McMahon Line. Perhaps Red China would similarly confirm India's northeastern borders along the 700 miles of the watershed McMahon Line, if allowed in the northwest to keep the 9,000 square miles of Kashmir around Ladakh, where Red China has built a strategic military road running from its own Sinkiang province into Tibet.

Nehru has insisted that the boundaries between China and India are a matter of historical record, which may be discussed but not renegotiated, and that there is no point in any meeting until the Chinese first vacate their posts on Indian territory. Had he changed? Answered Nehru: "I have ventured to say that I have not changed my mind. You do not seem to realize that my mind is not so thick as to see in only one direction; it can see in two or three directions. Discussions may not be fruitful, and yet they may be advisable. Do you understand that?"