Chinese President Hu Jintao met with his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev here on Saturday, with both sides pledging to further boost cooperation and common development.
Hu, who arrived in the Kazakh capital late Friday for a state visit, lauded the progress in bilateral cooperation in a number of fields, saying this year has seen remarkable improvement in bilateral ties.
He said both countries support each other in major issues of common concern and have coordinated closely under such multilateral frameworks such as the United Nations, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), which has in turn contributed to greatly promoting steady development of both countries and the entire region.
The Chinese president called on both sides to reinforce cooperation in all aspects, and listed five areas in which more work can be done:
Firstly, to increase high-level exchange of visits and deepen consultation and dialogue between related departments of the two countries;
Secondly, to expand mutually beneficial cooperation in such fields as trade and economy, transportation and energy;
Thirdly, to deepen security cooperation to meet new threats against the region;
Fourthly, to intensify cooperation under such multilateral frameworks as the United Nations, the SCO and the CICA, to effectively safeguard the common interests of both countries;
And fifthly, to expand bilateral cultural cooperation and media exchange to foster public opinions favorable for the development of Sino-Kazakh ties.
Sharing Hu's view, Nazarbayev said the Kazakh side highly regards the good-neighborly cooperation with China and deems it vital to to maintain and develop relations with China.
Nazarbayev stressed that his country stands ready to join hands with China in promoting cooperation in all fields, adding that Sino-Kazakh economic cooperation has a solid legal basis and is expanding and deepening continuously.
He also said both countries share broad common interests and have similar stance on world and regional affairs, and stressed that his country attaches importance to carrying out security cooperation with China.
He vowed that Kazakhstan will not permit any organization or individual to take any activity on its soil that can cause harm to China.
After their talks, the two presidents inked a China-Kazakhstan joint communique and witnessed the signing of nine agreements on bilateral economic, trade and energy cooperation.
Sino-Kazakh trade totaled 8.36 billion U.S. dollars last year, up 22.8 percent from the previous year. Bilateral trade reached 5.97 billion dollars in the first half of this year, up 60.4 percent from the same period of last year.
The Chinese president arrived in Astana from Russia's Chelyabinsk, where he observed a joint anti-terrorism drill staged by the six SCO member states, together with leaders of other SCO members.
Before the stay in Russia, Hu paid a state visit to Kyrgyzstan and attended a SCO summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan's capital.
Source: Xinhua
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