Pakistan PM meets China’s Hu to end visit

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Friday saluted Pakistan’s prime minister as an “old friend” of Beijing, extending more warm words to Islamabad as it faces US pressure after May 2 operation.
Yousuf Raza Gilani has spent much of his visit to China lauding Pakistan’s close ties with Beijing, as pressure mounts following the unilateral operation that led to bin Laden’s death and US lawmakers demand a review of aid to Islamabad.
“Our all-weather friendship and strategic cooperative partnership has stood the test of time and the changes in the international and regional situation,” Gilani said in a speech at Peking University on Thursday.
“We have stood by each other at all times and under all circumstances,” he said — a message that has permeated the four-day visit.
On Friday, before their talks at the Great Hall of the People, Hu said Gilani’s visit would “certainly give a strong boost to the good neighbourly friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation” between the two countries.
Islamabad, always close to Beijing, has highlighted that relationship in the wake of the May 2 killing of the Al-Qaeda leader by US forces on Pakistani soil — an operation that has thrown Pakistan-US ties into turmoil.
Lawmakers have called for a review of US aid flowing into Pakistan, saying Islamabad must do more to combat extremists and explain how bin Laden could have lived in a Pakistani garrison town, apparently for years, undetected.
Pakistan received a total of $2.7 billion dollars in aid and reimbursements from Washington in fiscal year 2010, which ended on October 1.
In Beijing, Defence Minister Ahmad Mukhtar said that Pakistan hoped to take delivery within the next six months of 50 JF-17 fighter jets manufactured jointly with China, already Pakistan’s main arms supplier.
“We think there is a good deal,” Mukhtar told reporters.
Pakistan’s air force has a fleet of Chinese aircraft, including F-7PGs and A-5s, but also F-16s and French Mirages.
The neighbours began developing the JF-17 together in 1999 and Pakistan has said it wants 250 of the jets.
In November last year, Islamabad said it would buy Chinese missiles and flight systems for the jets, Chinese state media reported.
The two countries also have growing commercial links — two-way trade totalled $8.7 billion in 2010, up 27.7 percent on-year, according to Chinese data — and have collaborated extensively in the energy sector.
Only last week, Pakistan opened a nuclear power plant built with China at Chashma in central Punjab province, and said Beijing had been contracted to construct two more reactors to ease energy shortages.
Gilani on Thursday urged Chinese business leaders to invest in the sector — crippling power shortages in Pakistan have restricted production to around 80 percent of the country’s needs.
“Joint ventures, with equity participation of Chinese corporations and financial institutions, can transform Pakistan’s economic landscape and would certainly prove to be a win-win scenario,” the visiting prime minister said.
The two countries hope to see two-way trade hit $15 billion by 2015.
China meanwhile needs Islamabad’s help in stemming potential terrorist threats in its far-western mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan.
“China is willing to strengthen the security dialogue and cooperation with Pakistan to jointly fight the “three forces” (terrorism, separatism and extremism),” Hu told Gilani.