Chinese foreign minister coming to Russia to prepare leader's visit

MOSCOW. Feb 20 (Interfax) - Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi will come to Russia to discuss the upcoming visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

"Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi will pay an official visit to Russia on February 20-22. He will negotiate with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov," the Russian Foreign Ministry information and press department reports.

"The sides will have a detailed discussion of the agenda of high-level political contacts planned for this year: the Russian visit of the Chinese leader and possible top-level meetings on the sidelines of international forums, including the G20 St. Petersburg summit," the ministry said. "There will be meetings of prime ministers and parliament speakers, vice-premiers at three intergovernmental commissions, a number of sectoral sub-commissions and working parties and other important exchanges."

Russia-China cooperation in global affairs and pressing world and regional problems, including the situation on the Korean Peninsula, in the Middle East and North Africa, are key items on the agenda.

"Russia and China are confident that crises in the Middle East and North Africa should be settled within the legal framework and with peaceful instruments. We share the opinion that foreign interference in domestic political processes in regional states and pushing of recipes irrelevant to local specifics are impermissible," the ministry said.

Concerning the Korean Peninsula, Russia and China support its denuclearization and insistently appeal for abstaining from any steps that may lead to destabilization. "Our countries are confident that the dialogue and negotiations are the only possible way of settling the situation on the peninsula, and they will carry on their efforts jointly with other parties to the six-nation negotiations on the nuclear problem of the Korean Peninsula," the ministry said.

As for the Iranian nuclear problems, "the approaches of Russia and China to such an important topic as the Iranian nuclear program coincide and we intend to continue the closest coordination of our new steps and joint efforts to assist in the search for ways of political and diplomatic settlement of the entire range of issues linked with the Iranian nuclear program, primarily within the dialogue between P5+1 and Iran," the ministry said.

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