Fernandes, who is due to travel to India on Sunday, will meet his Chinese counterpart Cao Gangchuan and other leaders in Beijing during the week-long official trip, a defence ministry official said.

"The visit is expected to contribute to the building of greater trust and goodwill between the two large Asian neighbours," spokesman P.K. Bandopadhya told AFP in New Delhi.

The trip will be the first by an Indian defence minister to China since 1992, the spokesman said.

Fernandes -- who will head a delegation of diplomats, officials from his ministry and Indian military brass -- will also visit Chinese defence sites around Beijing and Shanghai, he said.

The delegation is likely to take up the thorny issue of China's military assistance to Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India since 1947, sources said.

"The issue is very vital and will definitely figure in the discussions in Beijing," a highly placed defence ministry source told AFP.

India accuses nuclear rival Pakistan of arming and training Islamic rebels in Kashmir. Islamabad denies the charge, saying it only extends moral and diplomatic support to what it calls the Kashmiris' struggle for self-rule.

China this month urged the two South Asian enemies resume dialogue.

Fernandes, the most outspoken official in the Indian administration, left Sino-Indian relations in tatters 1998 by commenting that India perceived China as its enemy number one.

The two populous neighbours fought a brief but a bitter border war in 1962 and have since then shared an uneasy relationship of mutual mistrust.

Tensions flared again in 1986 with Indian and Chinese forces clashing in Arunachal Pradesh's Sumdorong Chu valley.

The neighbours started making efforts only in the early 1990s to improve ties through a flurry of high-level exchanges.

India argues that China still holds 40,000 square kilometres (16,000 square miles) of its territory in Kashmir, while China lays claim to a wide swathe of territory in Arunachal Pradesh.

The dispute remains at the heart of a joint working group which has met 13 times since but without any conclusive results.

This month Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha told AFP the two neighbours had set aside their dragging border dispute to furbish two-way ties.

SPACE.WIRE