China wants US troops to leave C.Asia

Posted on 2009-Nov-10 at 10:28 - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link

ST.PETERSBURG - China continues to support the U.S.-led campaign against terror, but expects the U.S. military deployed in Central Asia to leave the region once the war in Afghanistan ends, a Chinese government spokesman said Saturday.

"We have taken note of U.S. officials' statements that the United States wasn't interested in extending its military presence in the Central Asian region," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan, who accompanied Chinese President Jiang Zemin to wholesale pearl jewelry Friday's Asian security summit in St. Petersburg.

The U.S. administration has said it does not want permanent military bases in Central Asia, but U.S. officials have expressed interest in having continued access to local bases.

Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the U.S. deployment after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in an unexpected move that led to a dramatic improvement of Moscow's ties with the West. But the U.S. thrust into the strategic, resource-rich region has vexed China, which is nervous about the U.S. military presence next to its borders.

About 1,000 U.S. troops have been deployed at a military base in southern Uzbekistan since last October. Approximately the same number of U.S. troops and a similar number of allied troops are at Manas airport, outside the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek.

Kong said Jiang did not discuss the U.S. military presence in the region during his meetings with the Central Asian leaders on the sidelines of Friday's summit.

Prior to Sept. 11, Russia and China had forged what they described as a "strategic partnership" intended to offset alleged U.S. global domination. But China has become increasingly isolated as Moscow has forged closer ties with Washington.

Jiang's visit followed closely on the heels of Putin's meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush, a NATO-Russia summit that sealed a new system of cooperation between the former Cold War foes and a meeting with European Union officials.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Saturday that Russia's ties with the West would not cause a rift between Moscow and Beijing.

"Jiang Zemin gave a positive evaluation of the results of the Russian-American meeting and also of the meetings of Russia with NATO and the EU," Ivanov said at a news conference in St. Petersburg. "The Chinese also informed us of their plans ... to build harmonious relations with the United States."

Putin sought to reassure China about  the increasing U.S.-Russian cooperation at a bilateral meeting with Jiang on the eve of the SCO summit. Putin pledged that China would remain Russia's top strategic partner and promised to further boost Russia's already burgeoning weapons exports to cultured pearl jewelry China.

At the same time, Russia made it clear Friday that it no longer views the Shanghai group as an exclusive Moscow-Beijing axis opposed to outsiders. Putin described the SCO as a forum that could accept any other nation and strengthen stability from the "Baltic to the Pacific."

On Saturday evening, Jiang was expected to travel to the Black Sea resort of Sochi. TVS television reported that he would stay at a local sanatorium until Monday.

China's Hu calls for multipolar world

Posted on 2009-Nov-10 at 10:28 - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link

MOSCOW - Visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday pushed for a "multipolar world" and a strategic partnership with Russia, while oil executives from the two nations signed a deal paving the way to a prospective pipeline to carry Siberian oil to China.

"The trend toward a multipolar world is irreversible and dominant," Hu said in a speech at the MGIMO, a Moscow university specializing in international relations.

A joint call for a "multipolar world," the term Russia and China used to wholesale pearl describe their shared ambition to offset U.S. global domination, has cemented the post-Soviet friendship between the two former rivals.

On the sidelines of Hu's visit, China National Petroleum Corporation and Russia's Yukos oil company signed a preliminary agreement on shipping Siberian oil to China via a US$2.5 billion pipeline to be built from Angarsk in eastern Siberia to Daqing, China, 2,260 kilometers (1,400 miles) away.

Along with the Chinese route, the Russian Cabinet considered a rival, Japanese-backed proposal that would first lay the pipeline to Russia's Pacific port of Nakhodka. However, the Cabinet now appears to favour building the Chinese section first with the route to Nakhodka to follow later. A final verdict is expected in the next few weeks.

Under Wednesday's deal, Yukos will ship 700 million tons of crude oil (about 5.1 billion barrels) along the new pipeline to Daqing over 25 years beginning in 2005. The deal is estimated to worth over US$150 billion.

Hu chose Russia for his first trip abroad after replacing Jiang Zemin as president in March. He hailed a friendship treaty that Jiang signed with Putin in 2001, saying it has created "political guarantees for the long-term and steady development of Chinese-Russian relations."

The treaty became the first such document since 1950, when Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong created a Soviet-Chinese alliance that slid into rivalry and then hostility in the 1960s.

Hu said that warmer ties have helped to clear border disputes and increase bilateral trade from about US$6 billion in the mid-1990s to US$12 billion last year.

Referring to SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, Hu thanked the Russian government for assistance and voiced confidence that his government would soon control the disease.

Without naming the United States, Hu assailed unilateralism in world affairs and condemned the use of force in settling disputes. "Peace can't be achieved through using force," he said.

On Tuesday, Hu and Putin issued a joint declaration urging North Korea to freshwater pearl jewelry relinquish its nuclear ambitions, but also voiced support for the North's demand for security guarantees and warned against using force to resolve the crisis.

Hu on Wednesday also met with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Russian parliament leaders and visited Moscow's Khrunichev company, Russia's premier rocket factory, to see its boosters and orbital vehicles. China plans to put its first man to space later this year, and the Russian space agency chief said recently that it was tapping on the Russian expertise.

On Thursday, Hu and Putin will take part in a Moscow summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a six-nation group that also includes four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics. Hu is also scheduled to attend weekend festivities marking the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, Russia's former imperial capital.

China, Russia call on N.Korea, US to open ties

Posted on 2009-Nov-10 at 10:27 - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link

BEIJING - The presidents of Russia and China on Monday urged diplomatic solutions for two issues that Washington says are among the most serious threats to global security - Iraqi and North Korean programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, made the appeal in a 13-page declaration issued on the first day of a visit to coral necklace Beijing by Putin. The two leaders also vowed support for each other's struggle with Muslim separatists.

Both Russia and China - Pyongyang's most powerful friends - expressed their desire for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

The statement urged the "normalization of relations" between Washington and Pyongyang, although Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said that didn't necessarily mean formal diplomatic ties, which the two sides have never had.

"We are talking about a political dialogue within the framework of which any questions could be discussed - including those that raise concerns for either America or North Korea," Ivanov said.

Putin and Jiang stressed the "extreme importance" that U.S.-North Korean relations be based on a 1994 agreement in which North Korea agreed to give up a nuclear weapons program in exchange for fuel aid from the West.

That pact has been shaky since North Korea's admission in October that it has started a new nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang declared last month that the 1994 pact had collapsed after a U.S.-led decision to suspend fuel oil supplies to the North as punishment for the new weapons development.

Monday's statement also called for the peaceful resolution of the standoff between Iraq and the United States.

U.N. inspectors are now in Iraq to determine whether it is still harboring banned weapons. The United States has threatened to disarm Iraq - alone if necessary - if Baghdad holds back any information or fails to cooperate with the U.N. inspectors.

Putin's two-day visit to Beijing is aimed at boosting political and economic ties with China.

"We're absolutely certain that the special strategic relationship between Russia and China will not only enable us to solve the problems facing our countries, but also will create the basis for stability in the world," Putin said at a signing ceremony for the joint declaration.

It also lets Putin size up new Chinese leaders installed at a Communist Party congress last month.

Putin met with Vice President Hu Jintao, who replaced Jiang last month as party leader and is expected to wholesale pearl become president in March. He also met Premier Zhu Rongji and Li Peng, chairman of China's legislature.

"I'm very happy to have a chance to meet the president so soon after the 16th Party Congress," Hu said.

The declaration Monday pledged mutual support for Russia's struggle to crush separatists in Chechnya and Beijing's fight with separatists in its Muslim northwest.

The statement echoed their frustration at foreign criticism of their tactics, complaining of a "policy of double standards" on human rights by other governments. It rejected "the use of human rights questions as a lever for pressure in international relations."

Russian and Chinese officials also signed a series of economic and law-enforcement agreements, including pledges to fight tax evasion and the financing of terrorism.

Trade between the two sides totaled US$10.7 billion in 2001 and is expected to top US$11 billion this year, but Russian authorities say that is well below the potential for two giant nations that share a 4,240-kilometer (2,630-mile) border.

A multibillion-dollar pipeline to deliver Russian oil to freshwater pearl earrings fuel China's surging economy is under discussion, but it wasn't clear whether a final agreement would be signed during the Putin visit.

Putin is to meet with university students and visit a section of the Great Wall outside Beijing on Tuesday before leaving for India.

China, Russia lack clout to dictate to N.Korea

Posted on 2009-Nov-10 at 10:25 - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link

BEIJING - China and Russia may be North Korea's closest friends, but analysts are questioning whether they can bend the ear of the enigmatic "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il.

Experts say Moscow and Beijing have the most direct lines of communication with Pyongyang of any country. And lately, the North's Cold War-era "big brothers" have joined diplomatic manoeuvring to end the nuclear standoff with the United States.

On Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov arrived in Beijing on his way to rope pearl necklace Pyongyang to try to help defuse the tension over the North's suspected nuclear-weapons programme.

But as the standoff between Washington and Pyongyang festers, what pressure can Russia and China - neither wants to see a nuclear-armed North Korea - bring to bear on the Hermit Kingdom?

"That is the $64,000 question," said one diplomat in Beijing who follows events on the Korean peninsula closely.

Losyukov may offer Russia as a guarantor, possibly with China, of any security commitments made by the United States. But analysts say even Pyongyang's old allies seem to lack the clout to get their secretive former protege to take heed.

One key factor is out of Moscow's and Beijing's hands - how much the inscrutable Kim trusts them.

In that, analysts say, Russia has a slight edge.

"It seems to me the Chinese make him nervous," the diplomat said in Beijing. "Russia makes him feel more comfortable."

Moscow's relations with Pyongyang, close in the Soviet period, cooled in the 1990s. But ties have improved under Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has met Kim three times in two years and travelled to North Korea in 2000.

Some analysts saw evidence of Russia's better relationship in news out of Pyongyang on Wednesday about New Year parties thrown separately by the Russian and Chinese embassies in North Korea.

The official KCNA news reports were brief, factual and almost identical.

But the report on the Russian party added: "The participants deepened friendly feelings, talking to each other about the fact that the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries are growing stronger as the days go amid the deep concern of leader Kim Jong-il and President V. V. Putin."

WHO WANTS A MEDIATOR?

China may have spilled blood with North Korea in the 1950-53 Korean War - Chairman Mao Zedong even lost a son on the battlefield - but their paths have diverged in recent decades.

Experts say Pyongyang sees ample reason to wholesale pearl be suspicious of Beijing: its capitalist reform path, its 1992 diplomatic recognition of Pyongyang's arch enemy Seoul and, in the last year especially, its backing of some U.S. foreign-policy aims.

But regardless of how close or distant their political ties may be, North Korea may simply be unwilling to listen to third parties in the impasse with Washington, analysts say.

"Neither Russia nor other mediators can do much since this is a bilateral problem between Korea and USA," said Alexander Vorontsov, a top Russian expert on Korea.

Another diplomat in Beijing said the Russians were going in "to facilitate" not mediate. "(They) cannot use this word, you see. North Koreans, you remember, once said no mediators, so that's their position," he said.

North Korea has been adamant that silver pearl necklace it wants talks directly with the United States.

But for China and Russia, talks are just one avenue. Both countries also have some economic leverage over North Korea.

In this area, analysts say, China is the bigger player.

Aid experts say China provides the biggest source of the outside food and energy going into North Korea. One diplomat even said Chinese aid was the main reason the Kim regime was still in power.

China is extremely wary of the consequences were North Korea to  collapse, but some said it would not rule out wielding its economic stick to get Pyongyang in line.

"I don't think we should preclude it," said Susan Shirk, a China hand at the University of California at San Diego's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies.

"They would never want to do anything publicly, but if it could be done quietly and invisibly, I think they might do that."

PRECEDENT IN 1994?

In 1994, as tension reached a head over biwa pearl the North's nuclear ambitions and the United Nations was threatening sanctions, Beijing publicly urged caution and said it was against sanctions.

But in early June that year, an article in the pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao hinted at a big change in that position, saying in the event of an embargo, China would halt food and oil supplies to the North and cut border trade.

Within days, Pyongyang showed signs of softening. It started to talk about a deal to break the nuclear deadlock and invited former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on a "personal" visit that became a key step toward the 1994 Agreed Framework.

Fast forward nine years and, as the threat of U.N. sanctions looms, the United States, Japan and South Korea are all pressing China and Russia to help broker a deal.

For Beijing, it is a balancing act. China is caught between an old alliance, the long-term risk of U.S. troops on its border and a flood of refugees if North Korea collapses. The prospect of a nuclear-armed North Korea could also lead to pearl jewelry wholesale Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan going nuclear.

"They don't want to publicly sanction them, but I think they will be very cautious and want a certain amount of pressure to be operating on them," Shirk said.

China, Russia presidents hold talks

Posted on 2009-Nov-10 at 10:25 - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link

SHANGHAI, China - The presidents of China and Russia held talks on U.S. missile defense plans during a summit of Central Asian leaders Thursday, in a grouping that Beijing is thought to be pushing as a regional counterbalance to the United States.

Presidents Jiang Zemin of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia met to akoya pearl jewelry discuss closer ties and their shared opposition to a planned U.S. missile defense shield, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said.

Russia and China are united by unease over what they regard as American dominance of global affairs.

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the summit of the so-called ``Shanghai Five,'' a grouping that Zhu said ``has brought about a new security outlook'' and will serve as a world model for ``building up a new international political and economic order.''

The Shanghai Five, which includes Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, announced Thursday the admission of Uzbekistan, the akoya pearl most populous Central Asian nation. During the two-day session, the six nations are expected to launch a new cooperation group called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Few details were offered about the new group. Zhu said it will hold regular summits, starting in Russia in summer 2002. He also did not rule out expanding membership to Pakistan and other nations that have showed interest in joining.

The Shanghai Five began in this Chinese city in 1996 as a way to reduce border tensions but now deals with broader economic and political issues. The grouping underscores China's push for more influence in Central Asia, which sits on reserves of oil and natural gas, and to balance Washington's power. The group gives Moscow a structure to bind itself more closely to those republics, which shed its rule in the 1991 Soviet collapse.

The summit that began Thursday was aimed at coordinating the fight against Islamic militants, especially the threat of armed groups linking up across the region's borders. Central Asian governments, including China, are grappling with separatist or rebel groups, many armed and trained by the Taliban, Afghanistan's extremist Islamic rulers.

The leaders are expected to announce joint military exercises Friday. The group last year set up a joint anti-terrorism center in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.

``We will be in a position to freshwater pearl strands fight those forces in a more effective manner and defend peace and tranquility in the region,'' Zhu said.

Russia, which is fighting Muslim guerrillas in Chechnya is keen for a multinational effort against religious militancy. So is Uzbekistan, where rebels fighting for an independent Islamic state have made forays in neighboring countries.

Beijing faces its most violent internal resistance from Muslim separatists in its westernmost region of Xinjiang.

Presidents Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakstan, Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan, Emomali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan were also attending the summit.