Chinese and Soviets Report Progress in Border Talks

China and the Soviet Union, completing a new round of talks, indicated Friday that they are making progress toward resolving a longstanding dispute over their 1,500-mile-long northeastern border.

According to an unusually positive joint statement, the latest discussions have proved “beneficial to deepening mutual understanding and promoting a settlement of the boundary question.”

The two sides agreed to establish groups of experts to discuss the eastern sector of the border, where it runs along the Amur and Ussuri rivers.

China’s Vice Foreign Minister Qian Qichen said, “As regards principles, the opinions of the two sides were completely in accord. . . . But we are still a long way from success.”

East European diplomats here also cautioned that no breakthrough had occurred and that many difficult obstacles remain.

The major problem in the eastern sector is the disposition of disputed, Soviet-held Bear Island, which lies at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers opposite the Soviet city of Khabarovsk. The Soviets maintain that the island, which houses military installations, is vital to the security of the city.

The Soviets took control of the island in the late 1920s, but the Chinese contend that since the main channel runs north of the island, it should belong to China.

The northeastern border, scene of violent clashes in 1969, will be settled on the basis of two agreed principles--that the middle line of the river shall be taken as the boundary, and that it should be done “on the basis of the existing relevant treaties.”

The second principle meets China’s point--which will become more crucial when the western sector is discussed--that the present line of control deviates in some significant places from what was stipulated in 19th-Century treaties.

A first round of talks was held in Moscow last February after a break of nine years without negotiation over the 4,500-mile-long borders.

The agreement to resume talks this year was hastened by a concession from Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. In July last year, Gorbachev said that the Soviet Union is willing to accept China’s position that the border along the Amur River is the river’s middle line, or main ship channel. The Soviets previously had insisted that the border be the Chinese river bank.

Friday’s agreement means that detailed work on defining the eastern river border will begin by joint working groups of experts. If this goes well, the next round of talks should be able to tackle the western frontier between Chinese Xinjiang and Soviet Kazakhstan.

One Western diplomat said the decision to agree on principles and to set up a working group marked a “surprisingly fast and significant” breakthrough in the discussions.