NEW DELHI - CHINA'S foreign minister arrived in India on Sunday for talks with top officials on a long-standing border row which triggered a brief but bloody war in 1962, officials.

Mr Yang arrived in Kolkata, where he was to inaugurate a new consulate, and will meet his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here on Monday.

'I welcome the Chinese foreign minister,' said Mr Mukherjee, according to the Press Trust of India. 'We will treat him as an honoured guest.'

Indian officials have said the two sides would discuss ways to boost trade and review ongoing negotiations over their continuing border dispute.

India says China occupies 38,000 square kilometres of its Himalayan territory, while Beijing claims the whole of the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which is 90,000 square kilometres.

India and China have so far held 11 rounds of talks to resolve the issue.

Mr Mukherjee travelled to Beijing in June in line with stepped-up political and trade contact between the world's two most populous nations, with China now India's second-largest trading partner.

During a trip to China by premier Singh in January, the two sides agreed to lift the target for bilateral trade - which soared to 38.7 billion dollars last year - to 60 billion dollars (S$86.16 billion) by 2010.

The visit also comes as India expressed disappointment with China for its stance at a meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group, the regulatory body for global atomic commerce, on allowing India to join the civilian nuclear trade.

'We were rather disappointed because the Chinese suddenly jumped into the arena supporting - they didn't say anything themselves - the naysayers,' India's national security adviser M.K. Narayanan told NDTV news channel Sunday.

The body on Saturday finally granted trading rights to India, which has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, paving the way for a controversial atomic cooperation deal with the United States to be finalised. -- AFP