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Chinese strongman Li Peng will visit India in Jan: AFP

Former Chinese premier and current chairman of Parliament, Li Peng, will visit India next month in the highest-ranking visit since New Delhi's 1998 nuclear tests, officials said.

Foreign ministry spokesman Raminder Singh Jassal told reporters that the exact dates of Li's visit would be announced later.

"An advance team of Chinese officials are in the capital and his programme is being finalised," Jassal said.

Li, ranked two in the ruling Communist Party hierarchy after President Jiang Zemin, is the most senior Beijing leader to visit India after bilateral relations plunged to a new low following India's nuclear tests two years ago.

The visit follows an invitation from Lok Sabha Speaker G M C Balayogi.

"We hope the upcoming visit will promote all-round improvement and development of Sino-Indian relations," a foreign ministry official told the Press Trust of India.

"Li's upcoming visit and several other high-level exchanges in 2000 are an indication of the warming ties between the two Asian giants," he said.

Li, who visited India in 1991 when he was premier, is likely to take up the question of the disputed Sino-Indian border, which led to a brief but bitter war in 1962.

Apart from New Delhi, Li is scheduled to visit Agra, Bombay and Bangalore and Mysore.

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