China, Kyrgyzstan Plan Anti-terrorism Exercise

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, September 16, 2002

China, Kyrgyzstan Plan Anti-terrorism Exercise

Troops from China and Kyrgyzstan will take part in a large-scale joint anti-terrorism exercise next month, the Chinese foreign ministry said Monday.

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Troops from China and Kyrgyzstan will take part in a large-scale joint anti-terrorism exercise next month, the Chinese foreign ministry said Monday.

"China and Kyrgyzstan have agreed to hold joint anti-terrorism military exercises along the border area in October," a foreign ministry spokesman told AFP.

"This demonstrates the resolute will of China and Kyrgyzstan to jointly combat the three evil forces (of terrorism, separatism and extremism)," he said.

The Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong-based paper, Monday said the planned exercise would involve "tens of thousands" of troops and cover a 100-kilometer-deep (63-mile-deep) area along the border.

China shares several hundreds of kilometers of border with Kyrgyzstan in its western region of Xinjiang.

The exercise aims to practice coordinated operations against international terrorism and test various anti-terrorism tactics, the Wen Wei Po said.

It will be the first bilateral anti-terrorism exercise within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which groups six states in and around Central Asia including China and Russia, the foreign ministry spokesman said.

He said the exercise would also mark "a concrete step" in implementing the Shanghai Convention, signed in June last year, which lays a legal foundation for joint efforts to combat terrorism and separatism.

The Shanghai group was formally established in June 2001, when Uzbekistan joined the existing "Shanghai Five" which had met annually since 1996.

Besides China, Russia and Kyrgyzstan, the group includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The group has pledged to cooperate against international terrorism, ethnic separatism and religious extremism in the Muslim-dominated Central Asian region.

Source: Agencies

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