NEW DELHI, Nov 8 (AFP) - India and China have agreed to maintain peace on their disputed border during talks between military commanders of the two Asian giants in Tibet, the defence ministry said here Friday.

The ministry said officials from the Indian army and China's People's Liberation Army met in the Tibetan zone of Dingsong for talks on the disputed border, which led the two Asian giants to a bitter clash in 1962.

"The delegates took another step towards confidence building between border personnel of the two neighbours by holding the meeting," the ministry said in a statement issued in New Delhi.

It said the two sides also decided to conduct regular bi-annual meetings in the future to maintain peace on the Sino-Indian frontier.

The announcement came a day after the Indian army chief, General Shankar Roychowdhury, said the two sides would discuss a reduction in forces on the border during Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to New Delhi later this month.

"The matter could be discussed during the visit of the Chinese leader," the general said.

"Our relations with China are good and improving," he said, adding that Jiang would be coming at the end of November.

"We are looking forward to the future with a great deal of optimism."

The army chief said, however, that despite an earlier commitment by India and China to scale down the number of troops on the border, "there has been no reduction so far although we have redeployed and relocated our forces."

India and China fought a brief but bitter border war 30 years ago over a stretch of disputed territory involving 128,000 square kilometres (51,200 square miles) of mostly mountainous and inhospitable frontier terrain.

Ties between the giants, the world's two most populous nations, have been warming since 1988 when India's then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi broke the ice with a landmark visit to Beijing.

Beijing and New Delhi decided then to put the border spat on the back burner and concentrate on improving relations in areas such as bilateral trade.

China, however, remains a close ally of Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India since the subcontinent's independence from Britain and subsequent partition in 1947.