Business to dominate Sino-Russian summit

By Robert J. Saiget

BEIJING (AFP): China is eagerly awaiting Vladimir Putin's first visit as Russian president, hoping to reaffirm the strategic partnership that blossomed under his predecessor Boris Yeltsin and to energise trade ties.

Since Putin became president earlier this year, Beijing has been worried Russia is backing away from their partnership to oppose U.S. power politics, diplomats and analysts said.

Russia has been more concerned with developing stronger trade relations.

Putin arrives late Monday and is expected to meet top Chinese leaders on Tuesday before departing for North Korea Wednesday, followed by visits to western Russia and the G-8 summit in Okinawa, Japan.

Russian ambassador to China Igor Rogachev said in the current edition of Beijing's influential Outlook Weekly that Sino-Russian relations faced few political problems but that economic ties needed to improve.

"We have more than once and we continue to stress that the material basis of our relationship has still not reached the level that our two countries have reached politically," he told the magazine.

Rogachev complained about a paltry US$6 billion in bilateral trade between the two giant neighbors in 1999, far below the $20 billion annual trade goal set by Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Yeltsin when the strategic partnership was struck up five years ago.

"Economic and trade cooperation should form the basis of bilateral cooperation," Rogachev said.

"But we must admit that while facing our mutual cooperation, both China and Russia put more energy in developing economic exchanges with Western countries."

Xia Yishen, a Russian expert at China's Institute of International Studies, a foreign ministry think tank, said the Putin-Jiang summit would significantly push forward trade ties, but any detailed agreements would wait until a visit by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov this fall.

"Both sides have not been satisfied with economic and trade ties, so during the summit, I think President Jiang will be ready to put forward some big measures," Xia told AFP.

Xia cited possible deals on huge oil and natural gas pipelines that have been discussed for years, as well as a second pair of nuclear reactors for the Tianwan nuclear power plant in eastern China which is presently being built with an initial pair of Russian reactors.

"China will also be proposing some investment projects in Russia and establishing more Chinese enterprises in Russia," Xia said.

China and Russia agreed in 1995 to establish the strategic partnership aimed at building a "multi-polar world" and jointly fighting "global hegemonism and power politics," a euphemism aimed at the post-Cold War policies of the United States.

The partnership was also framed in the context of the "Shanghai Five" grouping of central Asian states which also include Kirghystan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan and has worked to fight ethnic separatism, Muslim extremism and international terrorism in the region.

The two countries voiced strong opposition to the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, to Western condemnation of Russia's brutal quelling of separatists in Chechnya and most recently to the proposed U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD).

The system if successfully built will be capable of shooting down incoming nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles and will give the United States a strategic advantage against potential nuclear enemies.

Earlier this month Jiang and Putin met in Dushanbe, Tajikistan for a Shanghai Five summit and continued to voice strong opposition against the proposed NMD and a joint U.S.-Japan Theater Missile Defense (TMD) in east Asia.

In Beijing, Putin and Jiang are expected to issue a joint statement again condemning both the NMD and TMD, urging wider international condemnation of the two systems and warning of dire consequences should the "global strategic balance" collapse, sources here said.