Russia and China said on Friday they saw eye-to-eye on all the world’s problems including the Syria conflict, as the Chinese foreign minister held talks in Moscow to prepare for a visit by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平) later this year.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) confirmed after talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, that Chinese Communist Party Secretary-General and Vice President Xi would visit Russia after he is confirmed as head of state next month to succeed President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
Yang did not directly confirm Chinese reports that Russia would be Xi’s first foreign destination after taking the office of president at a session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) next month, in what would be a hugely symbolic trip.
However, he made clear that Xi would be attending the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) summit of the world’s top-five developing economies in Durban, South Africa, from March 26 to March 27 alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia and China have stood shoulder-to-shoulder throughout the two-year conflict in Syria, with Beijing joining its fellow permanent UN Security Council member Moscow in vetoing resolutions that would have introduced sanctions against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
“Russia and China have united positions, and promote these united positions in negotiations, on the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, including the Syrian crisis, Afghanistan, the Iranian nuclear program and other crises,” Lavrov said at a news conference alongside Yang.
“On all these cases, we and our Chinese friends are led by one and the same principle — the necessity to observe international law, respect UN procedures and not allow interference from outside in domestic conflicts and all the more the use of force,” Lavrov added.
Lavrov said that Russia and China had a similarly united position condemning North Korea’s third nuclear test earlier this month as “unacceptable.”
However, he said that Moscow and Beijing also agreed that it was important that the test was not used as a pretext to start a new arms race in the region or allow external intervention.
Fully developing ties with its booming neighbor has become a major priority for Putin’s Kremlin at a time of difficult relations with the West and as state gas firm Gazprom and other Russian firms seek new markets for exports.
Despite their tight diplomatic alliance, Russia and China have still failed to finalize a potentially huge gas deal which could eventually see almost 70 billion cubic meters of Russian gas pumped to China annually for the next 30 years.
Gazprom and China National Petroleum Co signed a framework agreement in 2009, but differences remain over the pricing and no final agreement has yet been signed.
However, Yang, who held a closed-door meeting with Putin the day earlier, said that the two countries’ bilateral relations were of huge importance for the world as a whole.
“We believe together that Russia-China relations do not just have major importance for our countries, but have an influence on ensuring peace and development on the planet as a whole,” Yang said.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has