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Hu meets Russian State Duma chairman

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-06-18 23:47

MOSCOW - Chinese President Hu Jintao met Thursday with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Boris Gryzlov.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries,  Hu said, hailing the sound and fast development of bilateral ties.

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Mutual political trust, strategic cooperation and pragmatic cooperation between the two countries have been brought to a higher level, he said.

China is ready to work with Russia to seize the opportunity and meet the challenges so as to push bilateral strategic cooperation to a higher level, Hu said.

There have been close exchanges and fruitful cooperation between the legislative bodies of the two countries in recent years, which has given an impetus to the development of bilateral relations as a whole, Hu said.

The Chinese president made a three-point proposal for the two legislative bodies to make greater efforts in the interests of the overall bilalteral relationship.

Firstly, the two legislative bodies should enhance cooperation so as to lay a firm legal foundation for further development of bilateral relations.

Secondly, there should be more exchanges and cooperation between different committees of the two legislative bodies.

Thirdly, more efforts should be made to consolidate and expand the social foundation for developing the bilateral friendship for generations to come.

China will, as always, support the cooperation between the two legislative bodies so as to make new contributions to the bilateral strategic partnership of cooperation through exchanges at various levels and in different forms.

Gryzlov said Russia's State Duma will contribute to the friendship between the two countries.

It is important to encourage cooperation between different localities of the two countries, in particular that between Russia's Far East and China's Northeast region, he said.

The two legislative bodies should play an important role in promoting this kind of cooperation, he said, expressing the willingness of the Russian lower house of parliament to make greater contributions to promoting economic and trade cooperation between the two sides.

Hu arrived here Tuesday night for a state visit to Russia, his first since Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took office in May last year. On Thursday, the Chinese president left here for Slovakia after concluding his visit to Russia. He will also visit Croatia.

Earlier this week, the Chinese president attended an annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and a meeting of the BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China, in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.