Better work is important in strengthening ethnic unity and safeguarding the unification and social stability of China, Premier Zhu Rongji told the Central Ethnic Work Conference which closed in Beijing on October 2.

　 Zhu told participants to study President Jiang Zemin's speech at the opening ceremony of the five-day conference, emphasizing the importance of common development, common prosperity, and common progress for the whole nation, and seizing the opportunity, working hard, and pushing ethnic unity towards a new era.

　 He said that, under current conditions, the unity of all ethnic groups is important in strengthening national unity and safeguarding unification and that, to achieve common prosperity, the Central Government will give more support to ethnic minority areas, and introduce more funds, technology, and trained people to those areas.

　 The government should help ethnic minority areas build infrastructure like water conservation, transport, telecommunications, and energy supplies that will play an important role in economic development, he said, and should work to eliminate poverty in ethnic areas and promote the development of central and western China where most ethnic groups live.

　 Education in those areas should be improved, he continued, with more science and technology for ethnic groups and more ethnic minority people trained.

　 Contradictions among the people of various ethnic groups and in ethnic areas need to be properly dealt with and disputes should be solved promptly. An effort will be made to fight sabotage of national splittists, he emphasized, adding that it is in the interest of all Chinese to increase national unity and maintain unification.

　 Today's meeting was chaired by Li Ruihuan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. (Xinhua)