India and China will have the first meeting of their special representatives in New Delhi on Thursday to give a push for an early resolution of the protracted boundary problem.

National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra will meet Senior Vice Minister of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Dai Bingguo.

"We expect the talks to succeed," a Chinese Embassy spokesperson said.

The decision to appoint the special representatives was proposed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his landmark visit to China in June and was promptly accepted by his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao.

It was felt that there had already been 14 rounds of the India-China Joint Working Group on the boundary question and the movement had been painfully slow.

The meeting takes place within weeks of China striking off from their official website Sikkim as an independent country, viewed as a key step towards the resolution of the protracted border dispute.

Beijing's decision had been announced just ahead of a meeting between Wen and Vajpayee on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Bali on October 8.

New Delhi viewed the Chinese decision to remove Sikkim, a former protectorate in the northeast that was merged with India in 1975 brushing aside Beijing's vehement opposition, from the list of Asian countries from the website, as an important development that could bring the two countries closer.

After the boundary talks, Dai is expected to call on Vajpayee and have meetings with other leaders.

Beijing has described the meeting as 'important' and hoped that a 'framework of principles' to address the border dispute could be firmed up by the two sides.

New Delhi has for long held that China illegally claims approximately 90,000 sq kms of Indian territory in the eastern sector of the Sino-India boundary in Arunachal Pradesh.

India has stuck to the position that China also continues to be in illegal occupation of about 38,000 sq kms in Jammu and Kashmir.

In addition, under the so-called Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement of 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5,180 sq kms of Indian territory in Pakistan occupied Kashmir to China, Indian officials said.