Chinese Premier Leaves Russia for KazakhstanChinese Premier Zhu Rongji left Moscoa early Wednesday after a five-day official visit to Russia for the Kazakh capital of Astana, where he will attend the first prime ministers' meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.During his visit to Russia, Zhu held talks with his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kasyanov and attended the sixth regular Chinese-Russian prime minister meeting in St. Petersburg. As a major and important outcome of the meeting, the two sides signed a joint statement on the premier meeting and six other cooperative documents, which marked that bilateral trade and economic cooperation has passed its "running-in" stage and entered a fast track of development. The Chinese premier also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Federation Council (upper house of the parliament) Chairman Yegor Stroyev and leading representatives from Russian business and industry circles. They discussed concrete ways to expand trade and economic cooperation between the two countries and implement the spirit and principle of the Sino-Russian Good-Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation signed by the heads of the two states in July. The leaders reaffirmed their adherence to defending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty as a cornerstone of global strategic stability and security and agreed to strengthen the United Nations' leading role in world affairs by greater joint efforts and to expand their nations' strategic partnership of cooperation as well as mutual coordination and cooperation on the international arena. |
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