AFP,
China and Russia pledged on Tuesday to step up military ties, but said the two giant Asian neighbours' close defence cooperation would promote global security.
“Overall and military ties between China and Russia are a very important factor in ensuring security for the world,” Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said after talks here with his Chinese counterpart Minister Cao Gangchuan.
Cao arrived Monday in Moscow at the start of a week-long visit to Russia aimed at strengthening military cooperation, in particular arms procurement.
His schedule included visits to military plants in Saint Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod which supply submarines to China.
“Military-technical cooperation between Russia and China has been expanding consistently over the past few years. It has already proved successful,” Ivanov said at the start of talks.
“I am confident that your visit will give a powerful impetus to further advancing relations between Russia and China,” he added.
Ivanov pointed to China's participation in the first joint security exercises conducted this year by members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation — Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan — including on Chinese soil.
“In past few years there has been a good development of friendship and cooperation between our armies in many spheres, including operational,” Cao said for his part.
The Chinese defence minister, who graduated from a Soviet artillery academy, urged an expansion of educational exchanges “to build up the Chinese army.”
Several hundred Chinese officers are currently enrolled in Russian military establishments.
The two ministers were to meet again Wednesday to chair a session of the Russo-Chinese intergovernmental commission on military-technical cooperation.
Cao's visit to Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg follows the signature last year of a contract for the delivery in 2006 of two destroyers which are to be built at the Severnaya Verf shipyards.
The Nizhny Novgorod visit relates to a contract, also signed last year, for the delivery of eight submarines.
The most recent major contract between the two countries was signed in January for the sale of 24 all-purpose Sukhoi Su-30-MKK fighters for around one billion dollars.
China and India are the Russian armaments industry's biggest clients. China accounted for more than 2.5 billion dollars worth of orders last year, more than half of Russia's export contracts signed in 2002 (totalling 4.8 billion dollars).
Russo-Chinese defence cooperation gained momentum in the 1990s after Western nations introduced an embargo in response to the Tiananmen Square events of 1989. It was cemented in 2000 at a summit meeting between presidents Vladimir Putin and Jiang Zemin.
“China is our main partner, because although India can purchase weapons elsewhere Beijing cannot, as it still faces the European and US embargo,” Andrei Frolov, an expert at Moscow's Policy Studies Centre, told AFP.
