Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Friday that all development activities between Pakistan and China would continue and the incident of the killing of three Chinese engineers would not affect the friendship between the two countries.

In an interview at the presidential palace, Musharraf told Xinhua that the incident had shocked him, the Pakistani government and the whole Pakistani nation.

"We condemn it in the strongest terms," he said. "We are annoyed at those who carried out this very evil act. We are determined to catch them and give them strongest and harshest punishment."

"Those elements do not want Pakistan to prosper and progress," he said. "They do not want development in Pakistan."

"Since Chinese are our great friends and they are helping us in this development and progress in various projects, they (the gunmen) have targeted the Chinese to achieve two things: deny progress in Pakistan and create a misunderstanding between Pakistan and China," Musharraf said. "But we are determined that none of these two objectives will be achieved."

"Our friendship with China is very strong and it will not be affected by the incident," he said. "We are determined to carry out all development activities as we were doing before. And we will be able to bring the elements to justice and suppress them."

Source: Xinhua