Li Peng draws
Li Peng draws Kazakhstan protest
ALMA-ATA (Reuter): Premier Li Peng drew the first open protest of his landmark tour of Central Asia and Kazakhstan yesterday, as activists slammed China's nuclear tests near this region's border.
Earlier, Premier Li signed an historic accord delineating a 1,700 km (1,050 mile) border between China and Kazakhstan. Li also granted the former Soviet republic a 50 million Yuan credit.
In another development, a Chinese spokesman said Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev agreed to halt activities of groups in Kazakhstan working for independence for China's northwestern Xinjiang region.
At the protest, about 150 anti-nuclear activists voted to send an open letter to Li saying that regular nuclear tests since 1963 in Xinjiang had "tortured" the earth and were affecting people in Kazakhstan.
"We call on you premier Li to join the anti-nuclear movement for the sake of keeping life on Earth...(and) to prolong until the year 2005 the moratorium on nuclear weapons testing," said the letter.
"We are seriously worried because this affects the health of Kazakhstan's people and the future of their children," added the letter, signed by leaders of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk anti- nuclear movement and its affiliated Lop Nur committee.
Joint Russian-U.S. exercises in doubt
MOSCOW (Reuter): President Boris Yeltsin, bowing to nationalist pressure, moved yesterday towards calling off unprecedented joint exercises with U.S. troops scheduled to take place on Russian soil in July.
Chief Kremlin spokesman Vyacheslav Kostikov said Yeltsin shared the doubts of parliament members over manoeuvres agreed last year under a bilateral military cooperation deal.
"The president advised the defence ministry to carry out additional consultations with the American side, taking into account...(also) criticism by the Russian public," he said.
He said Yeltsin had acted in the spirit of "constructive dialogue", a signal the compromise was one of a series aimed at drawing political parties into a Civic Peace pact.
The president plans a signing ceremony for the pact, effectively a two-year "political ceasefire", in the Kremlin on Thursday. But several major parties, including the communists, seem likely to abstain.
The planned exercises, widely seen as a breakthrough in cooperation between the erstwhile Cold War foes, were scheduled to take place on steppeland near the Volga river, not far from the central Russian city of Orenburg.
Russian military officials have said they would be aimed at developing cooperation in peacekeeping operations. Each side would provide 1,500 troops for what is largely a command exercise. There were no plans to use heavy armour.