NEW DELHI - India and China were engaged in a verbal spat over a strategic region that both claim as part of a decades-old border dispute, days ahead of a visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao.

India and China were engaged in a verbal spat over a strategic region that both claim as part of a decades-old border dispute, days ahead of a visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao. [AFP]

The first salvo was fired by Chinese Ambassador to New Delhi Sun Yuxi, who said in an interview broadcast late Monday that the far northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh was part of Chinese territory.

"In our position, the whole of what you call the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory and Tawang (district) is only one place in it and we are claiming all of that - that's our position," he told the CNN-IBN news channel.

India's Foreign Minister Pranab Mukerjee was quick to reject the claim early Tuesday.

"Arunachal is an integral part of India," Mukherjee told reporters at a function in New Delhi.

The war of words comes shortly before Chinese President Hu's visit. Hu is to arrive in New Delhi on November 20.

The dispute is the consequence of a brief but bitter border conflict in 1962 that left relations between the world's two most populous countries in shreds.

Beijing claims that the remote 90,000-square-kilometre Indian-administered state of Arunachal Pradesh belongs to China.

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A formal ceasefire line is yet to be established but the unsettled frontier has remained largely peaceful, thanks to agreements signed in 1993 and 1996.

Both sides have also signed an accord that commits New Delhi and Beijing to "safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas," while solving the boundary dispute.

Reports say one of the possible settlements could be India keeping the state of Arunachal Pradesh while China would keep Kashmir's Aksai Chin area that has been under effective Chinese control for about five decades.

A senior Indian official declined to comment on the report but said India and China were "not yet near a solution though progress has been made" in several rounds of talks between Indian and Chinese special envoys, M.K. Narayanan and Dai Bingao.

"This (the border dispute) will of course be one of the issues on the agenda during the Chinese president's visit," he said.