Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Russian President Vladimir Putin were expected to push to expand bilateral ties during formal talks in the Kremlin yesterday.
The Chinese leader chose Russia for his first trip abroad since replacing Jiang Zemin (
Russian officials have stressed that they expect Hu to stay the course set by Jiang. In 2001, Putin and Jiang signed a friendship treaty -- the first such document since 1950, when Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong (毛澤東) created a Soviet-Chinese alliance, which slid into rivalry and then hostility in the 1960s.
"The latest changes and processes in China have been at the level of mutual understanding and they have fit in well with the program for joint work," Putin's deputy chief of staff Sergei Prikhodko was quoted as telling the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Prikhodko said that yesterday's talks will focus on the development of bilateral relations, cooperation in the international arena and trade.
Before heading into the Kremlin, Hu laid a wreath under bright, sunny skies at Russia's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a traditional stop for all visiting foreign leaders at the foot of the red bricks of the Kremlin wall.
Hu arrived in Moscow yesterday, when he met informally with Putin at the Russian leader's Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside the city. Putin already has had several meetings with Hu, the last in December.
Putin said Monday that he had a "personal relationship" with Hu, and was pleased to welcome him not only to Russia but also to his home.
Later this week, the two leaders will take part in a Moscow summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a six-nation group that also includes four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the