Russia and China will enhance cooperation in many areas especially public security, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said in Moscow yesterday at a meeting with visiting Chinese Public Security Minster Zhou Yongkang.

 

Nurgaliyev said that interaction between the Russian Interior Ministry and the Chinese Public Security Ministry is strengthening within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) format, including the launching of the mechanism of the regional antiterrorist structure of the SCO.

 

Public security cooperation is among the most important issues between the two countries, especially under the changing international circumstances, Zhou said.

 

According to Nurgaliyev, the two ministries are actively interacting at the border and regional levels, the departments have accumulated considerable experience in fighting organized and economic crime and conduct joint search operations.

 

The two sides are "conducting the development of international normative-legal documents on combating terrorism, separatism and extremism," he said.

 

Both sides also gave much attention to cooperation in the sphere of training and retraining of personnel.

 

"The Russian Interior Ministry is ready to receive before the end of the current year a delegation of the personnel department of the Chinese Public Security Ministry in order to work out the final version of the draft protocol on the creation of the joint working group on cooperation in this sphere," Nurgaliyev said.

 

At the same time the Russian minister noted that the two ministries have been developing partnership relations not only in the law enforcement sphere.

 

"A group of children of police officers who had been killed or wounded on duty will go on vacation to China this summer at the invitation of the Chinese Public Security Ministry," the minister said. The Russian Interior Ministry for its part is ready to receive next year the children of officers of the Chinese Public Security Ministry, Nurgaliyev added.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 25, 2006)