Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has said that his upcoming visit to China would further broaden cooperation between the two friendly neighboring countries.

Musharraf will pay a state visit to China from February 19-23 at the invitation of the Chinese President Hu Jintao.

"We hope that we further broaden our cooperation and reach agreement with strategic effect," Musharraf said in an interview with a group of Chinese journalists at the presidential palace on the eve of his five-day state visit to China.

Since his last visit, he recalled, a lot of major achievements have arisen from the two countries' cooperation. The deepening of the Gwadar port in southern Pakistan with the Chinese assistance will be completed in June, 2006. The Chashma II nuclear power station with the whole equipment imported from China had the first concrete poured on the site in December 2005.

"These achievements are major contributions to Pakistan-China friendship," he said. "The friendship is strong and is going stronger."

He told Xinhua that Pakistan and China had good cooperation and consultations on international and regional issues. He said that he was looking forward to very broad-based discussions during his visit to China and reaching agreements "with strategic effect".

On bilateral cooperation, Musharraf said, Pakistan and China could enhance cooperation in telecommunications, energy, health and higher education. He hoped that the Karakoram Highway linking Pakistan and China would be repaired from damages in the Oct. 10 earthquake and upgraded for heavy vehicles for the speedy development in the areas along the highway.

In his opening speech, the Pakistani president said that Pakistan condemned the killing of three Chinese engineers in southwestern Pakistan.

"We are annoyed at those who carried out this very evil act," he said. "We are determined to catch them and give them strongest and harshest punishment. Those elements do not want Pakistan to prosper and progress. They do not want development in Pakistan."

"Since Chinese are our great friends and they are helping us in this development and progress in various projects, they (the gunmen) have targeted the Chinese to achieve two things: deny progress in Pakistan and create a misunderstanding between Pakistan and China," Musharraf said. "But we are determined that none of these two objectives will be achieved."

"Our friendship with China is very strong and it will not be affected by the incident," he said. "We are determined to carry out all development activities as we were doing before. And we will be able to bring the elements to justice and suppress them."

(Xinhua News Agency February 19, 2006)