China and Arab Nations

China has called for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state and peace between the Israeli and the Palestinian people, said Wu Sike, China's Special Envoy on the Middle East.

"As a friend of the Arab world and the Palestinian people, China is very concerned about the Palestinian issue and has made unremitting efforts to help through political negotiations," he said on the sidelines of the 22nd Arab summit in Libya on March 27.

China has consistently rejected Israel's construction of settlements in Palestinian-populated territories, he said.

Wu said his attendance at the Arab summit shows China attaches great importance to its relations with Arab nations, and is willing to further advance these ties.

China-Arab relations have undergone substantive development since the establishment of the China-Arab Cooperation Forum six years ago, Wu said. The two sides have made rapid progress in political, economic and cultural exchanges, as well as in cooperation in energy and environmental protection sectors, he added.

The fourth ministerial conference of the forum, meanwhile, is scheduled to be held in China this May.

U.S.-Russia Disarmament Deal Welcomed

China welcomes the new nuclear disarmament treaty recently announced by the United States and Russia, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

The two countries promised in the accord that they would substantially dismantle their nuclear arsenals in a verifiable and irreversible way. These efforts could also pave the way toward the ultimate goal of a full nuclear disarmament, Qin said in a March 30 statement.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced four days earlier that the United States and Russia had finalized a new deal on nuclear disarmament to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that was first signed in 1991. Both countries agreed to reduce their number of deployed nuclear warheads by 30 percent to 1,550.