Twenty years ago this week, one of the worst atrocities in Liberia's war a conflict that was marked by its sheer brutality and high civilian casualties occurred in Carter Camp when some 600 people were slaughtered on the night of June 5-6, 1993.

The neglect shown the victims mirrors the lack of action in bringing the perpetrators to justice. A United Nations-commissioned inquiry found the army of the late president Samuel Doe responsible, but other accounts have since challenged the report. No one was ever put on trial even though Liberia's post-conflict truth commission recommended prosecution for perpetrators of crimes in the war generally.

Nyenati Allison, who was then a reporter for The Associated Press, visited the area soon after the carnage and described a horrible scene: "Strewn through the camp were babies with crushed skulls, mothers hacked by machetes, elderly people butchered like livestock."

The victims were hastily buried. A profusion of bushes now renders the mass grave, dug between two aging trees on the outskirts of the old camp, all but inaccessible.

"The government needs to build a memorial here so that at least generations unborn will know what happened here," said Yelesah Mark, a 48-year-old survivor of that hellish night as he struggled to control his emotions.

Carter Camp existed originally as home for low-income rubber tappers of the Firestone tire company, situated 48 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Monrovia near the world's largest rubber plantation which began operations in 1926. When fighting between rival rebel forces and regional peacekeepers displaced locals, they sought refuge in Carter Camp, swelling its population to over 3,000. By the time of the massacre, those in the camp of mud huts were a combination of company employees and people displaced by fighting.

The camp was immediately abandoned after the massacre and visitors have to be told there once was a camp here. Grass has taken over everywhere. Apart from a Nigerian-originated church which operates here, the few visible living things are birds building nests in trees that once provided shades for camp residents.

Mark was among the displaced people who nearly lost their lives in the Carter Camp Massacre, one of the worst atrocities in Liberia's 14-year civil war that ended in 2003. When gunmen dressed in military uniform entered the sprawling camp, said Mark, "we saw two tactical jeeps in which they came taking positions at the two ends of the camp, but we did not know their intent at first."

The slaughter soon began, with the attackers using firearms and machetes. Over 200 of those who were butchered were children.

"My brother-in-law Bainda and my friend Sackie were among the batch of displaced people slaughtered behind a poultry house down there," he said. "The killings were all over the camp; as people cried for help, all you could hear were 'ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba'" Mark said, imitating the sound of automatic weapons fire.

"Whenever I ... tell the story to people, it brings back that sad memory; it looks like we are digging out old wounds," he said. "But again, the story has to be told."

Mark said those who drove into the camp and carried out the massacre were former soldiers belonging to the army loyal to Doe. The then president was killed in 1990, but the army he led continued to remain active, fighting other rival forces.

Flan J. Nowon was a relief worker supervising food distribution in Carter Camp 20 years ago. He and his team worked there hours before the massacre, handing out food to "desperate people." They decided to take a break and return to their homes outside the camp, planning to return and resume the food distribution the next morning.

"It was just about two hours later that we started hearing heavy gunfire in the camp," Nowon said, standing with AP reporters near the overgrown mass grave. "I believed for sure there was something terrible happening in the camp when I saw a woman who had been shot in the buttock coming out of the camp naked, bleeding and crying and carrying a child."

"I ran back inside and told my wife 'Carter Camp is on fire,'" Nowon recalled.

The lack of accountability for massacres such as this one has bred suspicion that persists two decades later that some of those who orchestrated the violence are in positions of power.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was a leader of a rebel group in 1993 and whose fighters many people like Nowon suspect had a hand in the attack, was found guilty in April 2012 in an international war crimes court in the Netherlands of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity and received a 50-year prison sentence.

But that was for aiding and abetting rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone, not for atrocities in his own country.

"Liberia became a place where killing was a way of life," said Nowon. "And those who killed people deliberately in Liberia have been left to roam the streets."

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(Reuters) - President Barack Obama has declared war on the press, say writers at Slate, the Daily Beast, Reason, the Washington Post (Jennifer Rubin, Dana Milbank and Leonard Downie Jr.), Commentary, National Journal (Ron Fournier), the New York Times editorial page, CBS News, Fox News (Roger Ailes) and even Techdirt.

Scores of other scribes and commentators have filed similar dispatches about this or that federal prosecution "chilling" the press and pulping the First Amendment.

Downie, who could open an aquatics center with the leaks his reporters collected during his 17 years as executive editor of the Washington Post, calls the "war on leaks the most militant I have seen since the Nixon administration."

The most recent casualties in the alleged press war are Fox News Channel and the Associated Press. The phone records of reporters at these outlets were subpoenaed by federal investigators after the organizations published national security secrets.

Then you have New York Times reporter James Risen. Federal prosecutors have been trying to force Risen onto the stand in the trial of alleged leaker-to-the-media Jeffrey Sterling (CIA) since the latter days of the Bush administration. When media strumming on the free-press topic reaches full volume, reporters and their defenders include the leak prosecutions of Thomas Drake (National Security Agency) and John Kiriakou (CIA), even though no journalist (or journalist record) appears to have suffered a subpoena in these cases. (However, the indictments in both the Drake and Kiriakou cases cite email communications with journalists.)

Championing the besieged press has become so popular that some Republicans have switched sides. Even the commander-in-chief of the alleged war, Barack Obama, has proved himself capable of making sad faces about the "war" on journalism!

In his national security speech Thursday, he said, "I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable." Obama went on to promise a review of the Department of Justice guidelines on press subpoenas. These are the guidelines that ordinarily exempt reporters from federal subpoenas and which his Department of Justice ignored in the AP and Rosen investigations.

To make nice with the press, Obama promised to convene a powwow of DoJ bigwigs and media organizations to address the press corps' "concerns." (Word to my press colleagues: Invitations to discuss "concerns" with bureaucrats are usually a prelude to a kiss-off.)

But all this legal battering of the press, while real, hardly rises to the level of war. Take, for example, the language in the affidavit for search warrant for Fox News reporter James Rosen's emails, which refer to a "criminal offense." To journalists' ears, the affidavit sounds like the precursor to an arrest, and has caused many otherwise sober reporters to protest that the Department of Justice was attempting to criminalize their business. But as George Washington University Law School Professor Orin Kerr argues in this precise blog item, the language in the affidavit "is designed to show compliance with the Privacy Protection Act" and is not a prelude to a prosecution.

No charges have been filed against Rosen, and the Department of Justice say none are anticipated. The Obama administration has yet to indict any journalists for acquiring or publishing classified information and claims it has no plans to do so. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on May 15, Attorney General Eric Holder expressed his negative enthusiasm for prosecuting journalists.

"You've got a long way to go to try to prosecute people the press for the publication of that material," Holder said, and such prosecutions have "not fared well in American history." (See Josh Gerstein's take on the affidavit and the business of prosecuting journos.)

The leak crackdown and there has been one has been mostly on the supply side, in the bureaucracy's offices and corridors where the government leakers dwell, and not the demand side in newsrooms, where journalists hang out.

As Scott Shane and Charlie Savage explained in the New York Times almost a year ago long before the AP and Rosen cases surfaced happenstance contributed to the uptick in prosecutions. Obama inherited cases from the Bush administration, both parties in Congress supported a more restrictive secret-keeping policy, leak investigation protocols were "streamlined" in 2009 and surveillance technology was making it easier to bring prosecutions that stick.

Also, the WikiLeaks torrent of 2010 ripped through the headlines, causing the administration major grief and leaving it with a grudge against the press. And, in June 2012, additional new rules to hinder leakers were promulgated.

Meanwhile, Republicans cheered on leak-chasers.

In June 2012, 30 Republican senators agitated for greater leaks investigations because they believed that Obama's administration seeking to improve the president's chances in the 2012 election was planting leaks about the drone program, the "kill lists" and Stuxnet with the New York Times, where big stories appeared.

Of the drone story in the Times, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer declared, "This was no leak. This was a White House press release." These sentiments were shared by progressive Glenn Greenwald, who wrote that the story came from inside the administration and was "designed to depict President Obama, in an Election Year, as a super-tough, hands-on, no-nonsense Warrior." (Hat tip to Huffington Post's Michael Calderone.)

Meanwhile, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) demanded the naming an outside special counsel to investigate the leakers. I have little doubt that before too long we'll be reading on our front pages about the press-entangling investigations into the drone, the kill list and Stuxnet leaks, and the cries of war on the press will escalate again, a crackdown on suppliers, not demanders.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, went the Republican leak-haters one better last year proving that Obama's war on the press belongs to all political parties and two branches of government by proposing a dozen new anti-leak measures.

She wanted intelligence agency employees to report all contact with the media, to limit contacts between intelligence employees and the press to designated officials only, to expand polygraph testing in the executive branch, to restrict commentary in the press by former government officials and to establish a half-dozen record-keeping programs to monitor and discourage leaks. The bulk of Feinstein's initiative failed, but it will be back.

Inevitably, press complaints about a war against them include gripes about how tightlipped the current administration has become. According to Leonard Downie, reporters covering today's White House say officials won't talk to them and refer them to hostile, bullying press aides instead. "The White House doesn't want anyone leaking," one anonymous reporter told Downie about the permanent snub, continuing, "There are few windows on decision-making and governing philosophy. There is a perception that Obama himself has little regard for the news media."

I can match Downie's reporting on this point: My colleagues tell me the same about the Obama administration, likening it to an information black hole. And here, I think, we locate the bedrock of the press beef against Obama. Journalists naturally oppose leak investigations for the practical reason that leak investigations dam the free flow of information that makes their stories breathe.

Of course, the work that journalists do is important, and yes, I want more openness from the administration and less vindictive approaches to leakers. But to fully comprehend the press corps' complaints, it helps to understand that the press lobbies just like any other interest group whose privilege is threatened by government laws, policies and prosecutions. Inordinately sensitive to any changes in the standard source-reporter customs, the Washington press corps revolts at even minor changes in their status.

Obama's wholesale deflation of their standing has made comrades out of ideological enemies. How else to explain Len Downie hollering "Nixon" at the same time Fox News's Roger Ailes is invoking "McCarthy" to denounce the Obama administration?

Suppression of the press contains in it the seeds of its own destruction. Or at least I like to think so. By bottling up information and limiting the opportunity of the press (and civilians) to scrutinize it, politicians lose the faith of some of the most ardent supporters and inspire professional doubters and free-thinkers in the press to redouble their efforts. Obama's campaign against leaks can only succeed if he exterminates all second-guessing from inside the national security establishment.

And seeing as the president is only a short-timer and the national security establishment is permanent, and constitutes an interest group as well, all his victories over leakers and the press will be temporary.

(Jack Shafer is a Reuters columnist covering the press and politics.)

(Jack Shafer is a Reuters columnist but his opinions are his own.)

MADRID (Reuters) - World number one and defending champion Serena Williams continued her serene progress at the Madrid Open when she eased past Spanish wildcard Lourdes Dominguez Lino 6-2 7-5 in the second round on Tuesday.

Chasing a fourth title of the year and the 50th of her career, Williams had too much power for the slightly-built Dominguez Lino, who nonetheless managed to unsettle her illustrious opponent with some clever drop shots and lobs.

Williams was joined in the third round by Maria Sharapova after the Russian second seed thumped American qualifier Christina McHale 6-1 6-2 in Tuesday's night session.

Sharapova, a former number one who won her 29th career title in Stuttgart last month, will play Sabine Lisicki for a place in the last eight. The unseeded German upset 15th seed Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia 7-6 7-6.

Williams, 31, said she had enjoyed the test against Dominguez Lino and the experience would stand her in good stead the next time she came up against a player like the 47th-ranked Spaniard, who likes to mix up her shots.

"I made a lot of errors, but her game kind of forces you to make errors," the American told a news conference. "It was a really good claycourt tennis match for me.

"Seeing as I have a few more tournaments on clay, it was perfect to play a match like this, so I know if I face another opponent like that I'll have that experience and I'll know how to play."

A 15-times grand slam singles champion, Williams will play unseeded Frenchwoman Kristina Mladenovic or 13th-seeded Russian Maria Kirilenko for a place in the quarter-finals. (Editing by Clare Fallon and Nick Mulvenney)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Home resales rose in April to the highest level in nearly 3-1/2 years, which should support the housing sector and the overall economic recovery.

The National Association of Realtors said on Wednesday existing home sales advanced 0.6 percent to an annual rate of 4.97 million units, the highest level since November 2009.

The increase, however, was below expectations for a rise to a 4.99 million-unit rate last month.

Compared to April last year, home resales were up 9.7 percent.

Tight supplies in some parts of the country are slowing down the pace of sales, but sellers are starting to wade back into the market, attracted by rising house prices.

The housing market is one of the bright spots in the economy, which has been hit by higher taxes and deep government budget cuts.

While manufacturing has come under pressure from tighter fiscal policy, particularly $850 billion in across-the-board government spending cuts, consumer spending is getting support from firming house prices and steady gains in employment.

That should limit the degree to which the economy slows this quarter after it expanded at a 2.5 percent annual pace in the first three months of the year.

In April, the median home sales price increased 11 percent from a year ago to $192,800, the highest level since August 2008. With prices rising, more sellers put their properties on the market, lifting the inventory of homes 11.9 percent from March to 2.16 million.

That represented a 5.2 months' supply at April's sales pace, up from 4.7 months in March. Still, it remained below the 6.0 months that is normally considered as a healthy balance between supply and demand.

A very accommodative monetary policy by the Federal Reserve, which has held mortgage rates near record lows, is helping to lift the housing market.

Adding to signs that the housing market recovery was establishing itself, distressed properties - which previously weighed on prices because they typically sold at deep discounts - accounted for only 18 percent of overall sales last month.

That was the lowest since the Realtors group started tracking the series in October 2008. These properties, foreclosures and short sales, had made up 21 percent of sales in March.

Also underscoring the firming housing market tone, properties are selling fast. The median time on market for homes was 46 days in April, down from 62 days the prior month.

About 44 percent of all homes sold in April had been on the market for less than a month, while only 8 percent had been for a year and longer.

Last month, first-time buyers accounted for 29 percent of the transactions, with investors buying 19 percent of homes. Investors, both individuals and institutional firms, are mostly buying homes for renting.

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Neil Stempleman and Chizu Nomiyama)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea's Supreme Court has upheld a ruling sentencing a man to a year and half in prison for exchanging emails with an alleged North Korean spy and praising Pyongyang on his website.

Spokesman Lee Hyun-bok said Tuesday the court cited the National Security Law in its ruling earlier this month against a 45-year-old South Korean identified only as Lee.

The law prohibits glorifying North Korea or contacting North Korean spies. Park could have received 10 years in prison.

The spokesman said the court deemed North Korea as a threat to South Korea. He provided no details about the alleged spy.

Lee's organization did not answer a call seeking comment.

Relations between Seoul and Pyongyang remain tense. They remain technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended with a truce.

(Reuters) - Soul singer Candice Glover vied with country crooner Kree Harrison on Wednesday in an all-female finale of "American Idol" to become the first woman to win the TV singing competition since 2007.

In a finale that judge Randy Jackson described as "so close," Glover, the 23-year-old former travel agent from St. Helena, South Carolina, brought the judges and the audience to their feet after belting out Tom Jones' "I Who Have Nothing."

"You are such a powerhouse singer," judge Keith Urban said. "The song is like a planet exploding."

But Harrison also earned high praise and a standing ovation with her moving rendition of "Up to the Mountain," Patty Griffin's song in honor of Martin Luther King.

"That right there is a winning performance," Jackson told the 22-year-old vocalist from Woodville, Texas. "It is your best performance of the night. Very nice."

With powerhouse performances from both singers, judge Mariah Carey said it will be a difficult choice for fans to pick the winner of the Fox TV show who will be announced at the end of a two-hour star-studded finale on Thursday.

"This talent is so magnificent," she said.

The two singers secured their places in the two-part finale after Angie Miller, an 18-year-old pop singer from Massachusetts, received the fewest votes last week.

SPLIT DECISION

Although Jackson said he didn't think either of the opening songs were right and found them a bit sleepy, he gave the first round to Glover who made Adele's "Chasing Pavements" her own, over Harrison's rendition of the ballad "Angel."

But Urban thought the winner of round two was Harrison, who wowed the audience of 7,000 in Los Angeles with her moving performance of "All Cried Out" by Alison Moyet in a split decision with judge Nicki Minaj, who gave top points to Glover who sang "I Am Beautiful."

But fans will ultimately decide the winner of the 12th season by voting by phone, text and online after Wednesday's show.

"American Idol" was once the most watched television show with 30 million viewers during its heyday six or seven years ago. But audience numbers have slumped in recent months, prompting media reports of an overhaul of the highly paid judging panel.

Jackson, who has been on the judging panel since the show started in 2002, announced last week that he would be leaving the show. The entertainment website TheWrap.com said Carey, who reportedly earns a $17 million salary, and Minaj and Urban would also not return.

Fox, a unit of News Corp, had no comment on the media reports.

Glover had the edge going into the Wednesday's show, which was broadcast live, based on the number of mentions about her across the Internet, news media, Twitter and other social media, which was consistently higher than Harrison's.

Social and news media analytics company General Sentiment, which analyzes tens of millions of sources of online content daily, predicts Glover will take the title based on its findings.

The winner will receive a record deal and be the first female winner since Jordin Sparks in 2007.

Earlier "Idols" include Grammy-winner Kelly Clarkson, and Carrie Underwood, another Grammy winner and the first country western singer to capture the crown.

Jennifer Hudson didn't take home the top prize but she did go on to win a best supporting actress Oscar for her performance in the film "Dreamgirls," as well as a Golden Globe and Grammy.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - SoftBank Corp is playing it rough in its attempt to keep Dish Network Corp from breaking up its $20.1 billion deal to take control of Sprint Nextel Corp.

The Japanese telecom company, which owns 33 percent of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, has told banks that their financing of Dish's $25.5 billion rival offer for Sprint could hurt their chances of landing a role in a highly anticipated public offering of the Chinese e-commerce giant, two sources familiar with the situation said.

SoftBank, Dish and Sprint declined to comment. A source close to Alibaba said on Friday that while SoftBank is a major investor, it does not make decisions for Alibaba's management. Alibaba has no timetable for an IPO yet and has not hired underwriters.

Softbank's unusual move is the latest sign that the battle for the control of Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier, is fast turning into a no-holds-barred brawl between Softbank founder Masayoshi Son and Dish's Charlie Ergen.

SoftBank agreed in October last year to buy 70 percent of Sprint for $20.1 billion. In December, Sprint also made an offer to buy out the stake in Clearwire Corp it didn't already own. But Softbank's plans have run into trouble, thanks in large part to Dish. In January, Dish made a counterbid for Clearwire, and followed up in April with the bid for Sprint.

Softbank's latest move could make it more difficult for Dish to firm up financing for its Sprint bid. At least one major bank has withdrawn from financing the Dish bid after Softbank's move, the sources said.

Dish has said it would need to raise $9 billion in debt to finance the offer, and Softbank has criticized its rival for not having committed financing in place.

In an interview last month, Son described the U.S. media veteran as an "amateur" in mobile. "Charlie has no expertise in the mobile industry," the executive told Reuters.

For his part, Ergen has fought back against the criticism. Earlier this month, he said acquiring Sprint was so important to Dish that he could consider selling the company altogether if he loses a bidding war.

Softbank's move, though unusual, is legal, the sources said.

So-called anti-tying rules prohibit banks from offering a product to a company on the condition that it gets a role in another transaction. For example, a bank cannot say it will only give a loan to a company if the bank is chosen as an adviser on the company's next M&A transaction.

But banks' corporate clients are not subject to these restrictions. A company, for example, may select underwriters for an IPO on the condition that these banks not participate in a competitor's future public offering.

Alibaba's IPO, which could come as early as this year, is one of the most highly anticipated technology deals after Facebook Inc's $16 billion offering last year and would generate lofty fees for Wall Street banks. In Facebook's case, underwriters split about $176 million in fees.

BANKS TIED UP

Dish is in the process of lining up financing, but is encountering challenges in part because of Softbank's move, the sources said.

Barclays Plc, which is advising Dish, and Jefferies Group LLC, are lined up to provide financing, with Dish speaking to more banks to join the financing, one of the sources said. Jefferies and Barclays declined to comment.

Many Wall Street banks including Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc, UBS AG and Deutsche Bank are already conflicted and cannot provide financing to Dish because of their roles in other aspects of the bidding war.

Bank of America is advising Sprint's special committee, while Citigroup, UBS and Rothschild are advising Sprint. Deutsche Bank is financing SoftBank's proposal.

Meanwhile, Softbank has already removed Barclays from a role in financing its bid for Sprint after the British bank was revealed to be advising Dish on a rival offer, sources have said previously.

FINANCING ISSUES

Dish's lack of committed financing is a concern for the special committee of Sprint's board that is reviewing Dish's offer to determine whether it could lead to a better deal than Softbank's, the sources said.

Ergen said on Thursday that Sprint's special committee has not yet given Dish access to its data room to gain a closer look at Sprint's books. The committee is taking its time in part because Dish does not have committed financing, the sources said.

In a letter to Sprint's board of directors on April 15, Dish said it intended to fund the $17.3 billion cash portion of the deal using $8.2 billion in balance sheet cash and raising $9 billion in additional debt financing.

"We have a proven track record in raising capital to fund strategic initiatives and have received a Highly Confident Letter from our financial advisor, Barclays, confirming our ability to raise the required financing," the letter said.

(Reporting by Soyoung Kim, Olivia Oran and Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Paritosh Bansal, Matthew Lewis and Paul Simao)

The church's General Assembly backed a motion affirming a traditional conservative view on homosexuality, but permitted liberal congregations to ordain openly gay men or women if they wish.

The assembly's vote would require the approval of next year's General Assembly as well as votes by the church's regional presbyteries to become law. The process is complicated, and is expected to take at least two years.

Monday's decision came after a lengthy debate on the issue, which has divided the church of about 400,000 members for years. Two congregations have split from the church over the issue.

"This was a major breakthrough for the church but we are conscious that some people remain pained, anxious, worried and hurt," said Lorna Hood, the assembly's moderator. "We continue to pray for the peace and unity of the church."

Albert Bogle, who proposed the motion, said it was a compromise to move the debate between the traditionalists and revisionists forward.

"My motion is to be permissive and to allow those who want to do this to do it. But I want to affirm the position of the Church of Scotland in the historic tradition of the church," he said. "It will give everyone what they want but it will keep us together."

The General Assembly, held each May, consists of about 700 members and decides church policy.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India and China will study new ways to ease tensions along their ill-defined border, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said on Monday in his first foreign trip since taking office, which comes just weeks after a military stand-off between the Asian giants in the Himalayas.

The number two in the Chinese leadership offered New Delhi a "handshake across the Himalayas" and said the world's most populous nations could become a new engine for the global economy if they could avoid such irritants.

"Both sides believe that we need to improve the various border-related mechanisms that we have put into place and make them more efficient. We need to appropriately manage and resolve our differences," Li said at a joint news conference with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, where both men appeared relaxed.

China and India disagree about large areas on their 4,000-km (2,500-mile) -long border and fought a brief but bloody war 50 years ago.

While there has not been a shooting incident in decades, the long-running dispute gets in the way of improving economic relations between neighbors, who account for 40 percent of the world's population and whose fast growing markets stand in contrast to the stagnant economies of the West.

Bilateral trade reached $66 billion last year but both sides believe the potential is much greater. In a joint statement that seemed to address Indian gripes about its $29 billion deficit with China, they agreed to address the imbalance, with specific reference to pharmaceuticals, IT services and agriculture.

India's Essar Group conglomerate is set to sign a $1 billion loan deal with China's China Development Bank and China's largest oil and gas producer PetroChina during the trip, sources said. They said the loan would be backed by the supply of refined products to PetroChina.

In an impromptu speech after an official welcome ceremony at India's colonial-era presidential palace earlier on Monday, Li said he wanted to build trust and cooperation on his trip.

"World peace and regional stability cannot be a reality without strategic mutual trust between India and China. And likewise, the development and prosperity of the world cannot be a reality without the cooperation and simultaneous development of China and India," he said.

Li said he chose New Delhi as his first destination on the four-nation tour to show how important India is for China and also because he had fond memories of visiting as a Communist youth leader 27 years ago.

EARLY SOLUTION?

While most observers think it will take years to resolve the border dispute, recent statements from Beijing suggest China's new leadership would like to speed things up, perhaps to shift its attention to disputes elsewhere in Asia, including the South China Sea.

Singh said negotiators will meet soon to seek an early agreement on a framework to settle the border, a goal that has so far eluded representatives in 15 rounds of high level negotiations since the 1980s.

The three week stand-off on the border that ended on May 3 was the latest reminder that sensitivity runs high. It distracted diplomats' attention from talks on investment and trade ahead of Li's trip and soured public opinion toward China in India.

The disagreement over who owns barren patches of the Ladakh plateau and the entire Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh means there is almost no road or rail connectivity between the giants.

At a meeting with Singh in Durban this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the two countries should seek a solution "as soon as possible" - a departure from previous language. His urgency was echoed in Delhi last week by foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang, who said the two sides needed to "redouble efforts" to reach a solution at an "early date."

That will not be easy, not least because it is politically difficult for an Indian politician to concede territory to China. Protests by nationalist groups in Delhi and the northern state of Kashmir on Monday against Li's visit highlighted anti-China feeling among some Indians.

Prior to Monday's meetings, a senior official at the foreign ministry said India was skeptical of recent overtures and will wait to see if China will bring anything new to the table.

Among the measures being looked at to reduce the risk of border confrontations is allowing higher level meetings between regional military commanders, another Indian official said.

Also raised in meetings between the leaders was the issue of the Dalai Lama, who China considers a separatist and who lives in exile in India.

India repeated its position that the Dalai Lama is a spiritual and religious leader, a senior Indian government official said. On Monday, a protester dodged tight security to unfurl a banner saying "Tibet will be free" in front of the hotel where Li is staying in Delhi.

After India, Li is due to visit Pakistan, Switzerland and Germany and is likely to carry a message that China wants more open foreign relations and should not be seen as a threat.

"We stand ready to embrace the world with a more open mind and hope that the world will view China with a calm frame of mind," he wrote in a newspaper editorial published on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Satarupa Bhattacharjya and Anindito Mukherjee in NEW DELHI; Michael Martina and Sui-Lee Wee in BEIJING; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)