http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7806448.stm
Page last updated at 16:55 GMT, Wednesday, 31 December 2008
China and Vietnam agree borders
China and Vietnam have resolved a border dispute 30 years
after a war which left tens of thousands dead.
The two countries announced they had completed the
demarcation just hours before a midnight deadline.
Government teams from both sides had worked for years
planting stones to mark the line of the frontier which stretches 1,350 km (840
miles).
China and Vietnam both hailed the agreement, but neither
mentioned any progress on a separate maritime row.
"The completion of the land border demarcation between
China and Vietnam will promote the development of the China-Vietnam strategic
partnership," said Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Dawei.
Mr Wu said the agreement would also "benefit peace,
stability and development" in the region.
The BBC's Nga Pham in Hanoi said the last-minute agreement
had caught observers by surprise.
Many had believed that there were differences between the
two sides that could not be quickly resolved.
However, it was not clear whether the two parties had signed
any official protocol on the completion of land border demarcation and no map
of the newly-defined border was released, says our correspondent.
The two neighbours, which normalised relations in 1991, have
had an uneasy relationship.
China supported the Vietnamese Communists during the Vietnam
War, but Vietnam is wary of its huge northern neighbour and the countries have
had several confrontations in the past few decades.
These include disputes over the Spratly Islands, a strategic
string of rocky outcrops in the middle of the South China Sea, to which both
countries, as well as several others, have laid claimed.
Analysts say border and territory controls have always been
highly sensitive issues in Vietnam.
Last year, public grievances over China's claims to the
Spratlys led to mass anti-Beijing protests in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi and
in Ho Chi Minh City.