By Hari Ramachandran

NEW DELHI, Nov 26 (Reuter) - India and China plan to sign three agreements, including one on confidence building measures along their joint border, during a visit by President Jiang Zemin's to Delhi this week, officials said on Tuesday.

Jiang, the first Chinese President to visit India, arrives in New Delhi on Thursday for a three-day stay.

"We expect an agreement on confidence building measures in the military field along the line of actual control in the India-China border area," Salman Haider, the highest ranking civil servant in India's foreign ministry, told reporters.

Haider said this would be an advance on an agreement on maintenance of peace and tranquility on the border, signed during former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao's visit to Beijing in 1993.

"The question of a mutually negotiated, mutually agreed reduction of forces as envisaged in the 1993 agreement is on the cards, is the next step," Haider said.

In August 1995, India and China agreed to pull back their troops from four border posts in India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, parts of which are claimed by China.

The decision followed two years of talks to ease tensions along the 4,000 km (2,500 mile) Himalayan border.

New Delhi has recently tried to mend relations with Beijing by soft-pedalling the decades-old border dispute and reviving trade across the Himalayas, suspended since 1959. The world's two most populous nations fought a brief border war in 1962.

Haider said the two countries would also sign agreements on preventing crime and drug trafficking and on maintaining the Consulate General of India in Hong Kong after its reversal to China in 1997.

He said agreements on bilateral investment protection and strengthening of shipping services between the two countries were being finalised.

Jiang will be accompanied by Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, Minister of Foreign Trade Wu Yi, Civil Affairs Minister Doje Cering and Chairman of the Tibet Autonomus Regions Government Gyain Cain Norbu.

The Chinese leader comes to India after visiting the Philippines, where he attended the one-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit, and Nepal. He goes on to Pakistan on Sunday.

Haider said other main issues likely to be raised during Jiang's talks with Indian Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda would include military and nuclear cooperation between Pakistan and China.

China is freported to have supplied components for Pakistan's nuclear programme, besides M-11 missiles.