Former Chinese premier and current chairman of the China's Parliament Li Peng will visit India next month, signalling the warming up of Sino-Indian relations, a senior foreign ministry official said in on Friday. Chairman Li will visit India sometime during the middle of January and both sides are consulting each other on the specific dates, The official told PTI in New Delhi.
"We have informed the office of the Indian Parliament and are awaiting a response from them," He said, while hoping that the proposed high-level visit would be crowned with success.
Chairman Li is very keen to visit India, Official sources said, adding that the upcoming high-level visit would augur well for good-neighbourly relations between the two giant Asian neighbours in the new millennium.
He will be visiting India at the invitation of Lok Sabha Speaker G M Balayogi. The Lok Sabha speaker had extended an invitation to Li during their meeting in New York earlier this year.
Li would be the senior-most Chinese leader to visit India after bilateral relations plunged to a new low after India's nuclear tests in may 1998. He is chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislative body.
He is ranked number two in the ruling Communist Party hierarchy, after Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
Bureau Report