Prosecutors from China and Russia have pledged to strengthen cooperation to fight cross-border crimes, including terrorism.

The two countries will strengthen sharing of intelligence and expand personnel exchanges, according to a final document of a Sino-Russian vice-prosecutor-general meeting that closed Tuesday in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province.

The two-day meeting followed the themes from this year's Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in St Petersburg earlier this month. Leaders of the organization's member states, including China and Russia, have vowed that they would join hands to crack down terrorism, separatism and extremism as well as organized crime and the illegal trafficking of drugs.

"The cooperation between prosecutors of the two countries has contributed to the crackdown on cross-border crime, the promotion of economic development in the region and the maintenance of stability along the border," said Liang Guoqing, vice procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

Sharing a border of more than 4,300 kilometers (2,672 miles), China and Russia have cooperated in the investigation of more than 160 such cases since 1998.

In April, the procuratorate in Jilin Province extradited, with the help of Russian prosecutors, a Chinese who was suspected of illegally pocketing more than 1 million yuan (US$120,000).

According to Long Mei, of the Supreme People's Procuratorate's department responsible for cooperation with its foreign counterparts, most of the cooperation between the two neighbors are conducted in criminal cases, such as drug trafficking and trespassing.

Long said that further discussions on the prevention of cross-border crimes between China and Russia will continue in October, when prosecutors-general of the two countries lead a bilateral conference in Shanghai.

(China Daily June 19, 2002)