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Central Asian

president meet

echoes Sino-US pact

SHANGHAI: China has arranged a meeting in Shanghai this week between the presidents of Russia, China and three central Asia republics in an echo of the Sino-U.S. pact signed here in 1972, diplomats said on Tuesday.

The Shanghai communique, signed by President Nixon, marked the start of China's return to the world community after years of radical leftist campaigns and formed the basis on which Beijing and Washington established diplomatic ties in 1978.

"Shanghai was an important place for such an historical event as the U.S.-China communique which made such a difference to relations between China and the United States," said a European diplomat.

"There might be something in this for the presidents (meeting)," he said.

China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will sign a treaty pledging peace along their mutual borders, the subject of conflict and controversy over many years.

The treaty is to be signed by China's President Jiang Zemin, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kyrgyzstan's President Askar Akayev and Tajikistan's President Imomali Rakhmonov on April 26.

It will stipulate that military forces of the five countries do not attack each other, do not conduct exercises aimed at each other, inform each other of the scope of the exercises and set up friendly ties.

A Chinese official, asked why the treaty-signing ceremony was being held in Shanghai and not in Beijing or somewhere closer to central Asia, laughed and said: "Good question."

But he denied any connection with the communique signed by President Nixon in the early 1970s and suggested the question of 'why Shanghai' could be raised at an official press conference after the signing.

A western diplomat said the echo of the Nixon visit may have played a part in the decision to choose Shanghai, adding: "Maybe they wanted to choose neutral territory."

The treaty-signing ceremony will take place in the Shanghai Exhibition Centre, a massive Soviet-designed piece of architecture built in the city in the late 1950s.

It will be the highlight of the visit to China's largest city by Boris Yeltsin, who arrives for a 24-hour stay on Friday morning.

Yeltsin is also expected to be shown the Pudong Development zone across the river from Shanghai's city centre, which the city government hopes will become the focus of Shanghai's future development.

The demarcation of the 3,700-km (2,300-mile) Chinese-Russian border remains a controversial issue, with the Chinese ambassador to Moscow calling on Monday for calm.

Yeltsin has said that the demarcation, provided for by a 1991 treaty, would go ahead as planned, but the governor of Russia's far eastern Primorsky region has said several times that Moscow should not cede land to China.-Reuter