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Indian government confirms Ma visit to India next month

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will visit New Delhi in the middle of next month, said a source from the Taiwanese trade office in New Delhi.

"The schedule is still being drawn up," said the source, who did not want to be named.

An Indian official confirmed Ma's proposed visit but denied it had any links with New Delhi's relations with Beijing.

Ma's visit "is part of a very gradual process that India has embarked upon while trying to be cognizant of Beijing's sensitivities," security analyst C. Uday Bhaskar said.

He said India had been "more cautious than others" in dealing with China and Taiwan.

Although India and Taiwan opened trades office in the middle of the 1990s, ties have not been upgraded to formal diplomatic level.

Ma's visit would also have been planned in advance of a diplomatic spat between the giant neighbors over the weekend that saw New Delhi scrapping plans to send 107 bureaucrats to Beijing and Shanghai, Bhaskar said.

The confidence-building trip was called off after China refused a visa to an officer from Arunachal Pradesh state "on the grounds that he was Chinese and therefore did not need one," an Indian foreign ministry official said.

India and China have been engaged in efforts to improve their ties after their brief but bitter border war in 1962.

India says China illegally occupies 43,000km2 of Kashmir.

China claims 90,000km2 of territory in India's northeast -- or all of Arunachal Pradesh.

Efforts to resolve the boundary dispute have moved very slowly, with 10 rounds of talks since 2003, when both sides appointed special envoys.
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