Chinese and Russian armed forces will conduct a joint anti-terror military exercise beginning July 22, military sources said on Wednesday.
The exercise, code-named "Peace Mission-2009", will be carried out in Russia's Far East area and the Shenyang Military Area Command in northeast China, according to the two countries' defense authorities. It will last five days.
Chiefs of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) would hold strategic talks in Russia's Khabarovsk on July 22, said Hu Changming, spokesman with China's Defense Ministry.
The two armed forces would send 1,300 personnel from each army and air force to participate in the exercise, the spokesman said.
From July 23 to 26, the troops will conduct the exercise at a training base in the Shenyang Military Area Command where theater-level command headquarters of both sides will be established.
The Russian forces would also send an airborne assault unit to participate in the exercise, according to the Defense Ministry.
The other four member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and the SCO's secretariat will send military observers.
The exercise was not targeted at any particular third party, but would showcase the abilities and resolution of both sides to jointly cope with various kinds of security threats and crack down on terrorist, separatist and extremist forces, the spokesman said.
The upcoming exercise falls on the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Russia, and would deepen pragmatic cooperation of the two armed forces and strategic partnership of cooperation, he said.
China, Russia and other member states of the SCO held two similar anti-terrorism exercises under the name of "Peace Mission" in 2005 and 2007 respectively.
(Xinhua News Agency July 8, 2009)
