Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji's just-concluded Southeast Asia visit is of great importance and completely successful, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan told reporters.

During his fortnight trip which was wound up Saturday, Zhu visited Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, and had informal summits with leaders of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Manila.

The visit is one of China's important diplomatic events in Southeast Asia at the turn of century and broad consensus has been achieved between the Chinese premier and other regional leaders, Tang said.

As hoped for, the visit has served to cement friendship, deepen mutual trust, enhance cooperation, and increase China's influence in the region.

It also served as an important link between the past and future in regard to the promotion of the good-neighborliness between China and the four countries Zhu visited and between China and the whole ASEAN as a whole, and to the further intra-East Asia cooperation for the new century, Tang said.

As to the informal summit between ASEAN on the one hand and China, Japan and South Korea on the other, Tang said it was an important meeting held at the turn of century as the East Asian leaders discussed how to enhance their countries' cooperation in the new century.

At the meeting, Zhu said that East Asian countries should concentrate on economic development and make further efforts to build a peaceful environment, saying these two aspects are where the East Asian countries share the biggest common interests. Therefore, East Asian cooperation should put priority to the economic, scientific and technical and financial areas, Zhu said.

At another informal summit between China and ASEAN, Zhu said China will continue to seek peaceful solution to differences with ASEAN through bilateral consultations for the sake of overall friendly relations and regional stability. All ASEAN leaders expressed appreciations to Zhu's statement and satisfaction with the development of the ASEAN-China relations.

During the visit to the four countries, Zhu had in-depth discussions with leaders of the countries on the development of a new century-oriented relationship of good-neighborliness, mutual trust and friendly cooperation, especially in the aspects of confidence-building, misgiving-relieving and a deeper economic cooperation, said Tang.

In an effort to relieve the misgivings among some Southeast Asian countries that China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) will bring new competition within the region, Zhu used various occasions to explain China's position and convincingly argued that China's accession to the WTO will be conducive to development and prosperity in the region, and all leaders echoed with welcome and support to China's entry into the world's largest trade body, said Tang.

On the South China Sea issue, Zhu told the leaders that China is committed to peace and stability in the area, persisting in seeking peaceful solutions through bilateral consultations.

While highlighting the importance of focusing attention on common interests between China and ASEAN, Zhu said no one should underline certain specific differences or take actions that would magnify or complicate what is going on.

In face of the recovery from the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the challenge of economic globalization, Zhu said, China and ASEAN members have a primary task to further strengthen their pragmatic cooperation in a conscientious way.

Another achievement made in the Vietnam visit is the consensus reached between Zhu and his Vietnamese counterpart Phan Van Khai that all the land boundary issues between the two countries have been solved. The two premiers have instructed the negotiation teams to speed up the preparations for the hopeful signing of a formal land boundary treaty later this month.

This is an important event for the Sino-Vietnamese relations and fully conforms to the fundamental interests and common aspirations of the two peoples, said Tang. It means that the two countries can enter the 21st century with a new common land boundary of peace and friendship, he said.