Beijing, January 14 (IANS): India and China are taking their relationship to "a new stage", Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said Monday, admitting that some bilateral problems remained to be sorted out.

"We have difficult issues, complicated issues," Menon told reporters after a day of hectic engagements for visiting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here. "We are trying to solve them. We have ways of dealing with these difficult issues." He added that without prejudice to each other's contrasting stands on contentious issues, both sides were engaged in trying to arrive at mutually acceptable solutions.

The foreign secretary said this when he was asked about Chinese claims on the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing claims as its own. Menon admitted that in the talks between Manmohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao, "difficult issues were addressed as well".

"Overall we are very satisfied with the outcome (of discussions)," he added. "What we are seeing here is the maturing of a relationship, the ability of our two states to deal with those issues." He said India and China were "taking our relationship to a new stage. It is not that we have removed all our problems. We have increased areas of cooperation".

Menon explained that the Chinese leadership had received Manmohan Singh "with great warmth" and added that some of it was because of the personal relations the two premiers had developed in recent years.

He said it was the first time an Indian prime minister had been accorded a private dinner. This happened Sunday night, on the first day of Manmohan Singh's maiden visit to Beijing. Menon quoted Manmohan Singh as saying that "the rise of India and China is for global public good".

Both Taiwan and Tibet came up during the talks, the latter only in passing. Chinese leaders, Menon said, appreciated India's consistent stand that it regarded there was only "one China". India also reiterated its traditional stand that Tibet was a part of China.