At a meeting in the Kremlin, Tang told Putin that China will make unremitted efforts to develop Chinese-Russian strategic partnership and continue consolidating and strengthening bilateral cooperation with Russia, aiming to substantiate the bilateral strategic partnership.

Tang said President Putin's upcoming visit to China from December 1 to 3 will be a big event in Sino-Russian relations for the year and China attaches great importance to the visit.

Tang said one of the main objectives of his visit to Russia is to prepare for the upcoming Beijing summit, adding that Chinese President Jiang Zemin and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Hu Jintao are expecting to hold deep exchanges with Putin on bilateral ties and the current international situation.

Putin congratulated the successful convocation of the 16th CPC National Congress and said he hopes to expand Russian-Chinese cooperation in the fields of energy, transportation and aviation.

Tang said the Chinese Government and people extended condolences to relatives of victims of last month's hostage crisis in Moscow and strongly condemned terrorist acts, adding that China is ready to further strengthen cooperation with Russia in combating terrorism.

Tang met his Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov on Saturday to make preparations for the upcoming Beijing summit between Jiang and Putin.

In addition, Tang met four other counterparts from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Moscow on Saturday to discuss the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's (SCO) construction and a series of international and regional issues.

Tang said the member states of the SCO have gained significant ground in pushing forward the construction of the organization as well as in co-operation among its member nations.

Stressing mechanism construction as a current focus for the SCO, Tang said preparation work for creating a secretariat had entered a key stage under the joint efforts of coordinators and experts from the six countries. China would like to complete the draft of relevant documents before next year's SCO summit and try to officially open the secretariat after the summit, he said.

Tang said the SCO still faces a very stern anti-terrorism fight, citing last month's hostage crisis in Moscow. The fact that the terrorist attack was masterminded by national separatists and regional extremists again demonstrated the necessity of unremitting efforts in cracking down on the "three forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism, he stressed.

The minister urged all SCO members to deepen security co-operation by adopting deals on jointly fighting against the "three forces" and terrorist organizations by creating a regional anti-terrorist organization in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek as soon as possible.

Tang said China appreciated and supported some Central Asian countries' proposals to enhance anti-drug cooperation, sign a multilateral anti-drug cooperation pact and list the work as one of the top tasks of the regional organization.

(China Daily November 25, 2002)