Saturday, April 9 2005 17:45 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Bangalore today (Apr 9, 2005) on a four-day visit to India that is expected to give a significant push to bilateral ties between the two Asian neighbours.

Wen, accompanied by a 100-member delegation, flew in here from Colombo for a two-day stay, beginning his visit to India on the last lap of his South Asia tour.

The Chinese premier will visit India's largest IT exporter Tata Consultancy Services and Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies tomorrow (Apr 10, 2005), underscoring the importance of the new economy sectors in the two Asian giants.

While TCS has a huge workforce of engineers in China, Huawei's R&D centre here, the largest outside of China, has over 2000 professionals, including about 40 Chinese nationals.

Wen will also interact tomorrow with top scientists at India's premier Indian Institute of Science and space scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation during his stay here in India's scientific hub.

Later today, Karnataka Chief Minister N Dharam Singh would meet Wen.

Wen will leave here tomorrow for Delhi where he would hold wide ranging discussions with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday (Apr 11, 2005), apart from calling on President A P J Abdul Kalam and Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.

During Wen's visit, both sides are expected to set out political parameters and guiding principles in a major step towards resolving the vexed boundary issue and firm up a vital protocol on Confidence Building Measures, besides inking over a dozen agreements covering civil aviation, trade, customs, water resources and culture.