Kazakhstan’s Defence Minister Serik Akhmetov has met with his Chinese counterpart Chang Wanquan in Beijing during his official visit to China, Tengrinews reports citing the press service of the Ministry.
Kazakhstan’s Defence Minister Serik Akhmetov has met with his Chinese counterpart Chang Wanquan in Beijing during his official visit to China, Tengrinews reports citing the press service of the Ministry.
According to the Kazakh Minister, Kazakhstan and China had developed strong bilateral ties in all areas of cooperation and regular meetings of the heads of the two states contributed to strengthening of the friendly and strategic collaboration.
Serik Akhmetov emphasised the success of partnership of Kazakh and Chinese Defence Ministries in military sector including military training and joint drills. Kazakh Minister also expressed gratitude to the Chinese side for its active participation in KADEX-2014 international exhibition that took place in Astana in May’s end.
Chinese Defence Minister Chang Wanquan said that his counterpart's visit demonstrated Kazakhstan’s active approach to further development of collaboration between the defence forces of Kazakhstan and China. He stressed that the cooperation between the armed forces of China and Kazakhstan was an important part of the countries’ bilateral relations.
Chang Wanquan marked Kazakhstan’s contribution to enhancing the regional security and spoke in support of “further development of military and military-technical cooperation”. When speaking about the cooperation within the frameworks of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), the Chinese Minister thanked Kazakhstan for successful participation of its Armed Forces in Peace Mission-2014 joint anti-terrorism military drills that were held in China’s Zhurihe military training range in North China in late August.
At the meeting, the ministers also discussed the further strengthening of cooperation between their ministries and exchanged views on the current issues of the international agenda.
In the end of the meeting, Serik Akhmetov invited his Chinese colleague to pay an official visit to Kazakhstan.
By Assel Satubaldina