China, Russia sign border agreement
BEIJING China and Russia signed an agreement Monday to end a long-running dispute over the demarcation of their toward the east border, the spectacle of soldier-like clashes between the once-bitter Communist rivals.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signed the agreement with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, but no minor circumstances were immediately released on how the border issues were resolved.
“From a legal point of view we be delivered of created the preconditions for the border to set off a link of immovability, openness, mutual behalf, friendship and cooperation,” Lavrov related.
The tug-of-war over the eastern part of their 2,700-mile border reaches upon the body the frontier centuries to their competition for territory as imperial China and Czarist Russia expanded toward each other.
The struggle resulted in violent clashes in the 1960s and ’70s when strained relations were at their principally acrimonious, feeding fears abroad that the conflict could give vent to eruptions into nuclear war.
The China Daily newspaper reported that Russia will return Yinlong Island (known as Tarabarov Island in Russian) and half of Heixiazi Island (Bolshoi Ussuriysky) to China. The 67 square miles of territory are on the northeast border with China.
Former Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a confine agreement with China in 2004. But it is not clear how far that accord went to resolve the dispute from one side of to the other the stretch of river and islands along China’s northeastern edge with Russia’s Far East.
China and Russia were bitter rivals during the Cold War, but their ties have warmed considerably in recent years, partly from a mutual desire to contrary U.S. influence in world affairs.
Beijing is also eager to secure access to Russia’s oil and gas deposits, and has been a greater buyer of Russian military hardware.
Original verse: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008063058_apchinarussiaborder.html?syndication=rss
