On the afternoon of November 4, Chinese President Hu Jintao met in the Great Hall of the People with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, who was here in China on an official visit and to attend the 10th Sino-Russian Prime Ministers' Regular Meeting. Both sides held friendly talks.

Hu made highly positive comments on important contributions the Sino-Russian prime ministers' regular meeting mechanism has made to promoting bilateral pragmatic cooperation in various areas and deepening strategic cooperative partnership.

Hu noted that this year, bilateral strategic cooperative partnership has been deepened and developed in an all-round manner and has shown unprecedented vigor and vitality. The leaders of both sides held a couple of meetings, at which they reached important consensus on a range of major issues and jointly signed and issued China-Russia Joint Statement on the International Order in the 21st Century. Both sides have successfully held two rounds of bilateral consultations on strategic security. Both sides have vigorously conducted cooperation in the areas of politics, economy and trade, energy resources, investment and military affairs and kept closer coordination and collaboration in international and regional affairs.

Hu hoped that both sides will give better play to the role of Sino-Russian prime ministers' regular meeting mechanism, double efforts, actively forge ahead, keep closer cooperation and ensure the implementation of all the measures taken in combining cooperation plans of both sides with their respective development strategies in a bid to continuously enhance the overall level of bilateral pragmatic cooperation and push China-Russia strategic cooperation to score more fruitful achievements in the new year.

Fradkov indicated that over the past year, both sides have done a lot of remarkable work for implementing the consensus reached between their leaders and pushing for the development of bilateral strategic cooperative partnership with mutual understanding and trust further deepened and the content of partnership continuously enriched and they have conducted sound cooperation in major international and regional issues. Both sides share identical views on the objective and measures for the cooperation in the next stage and their enhanced cooperation enjoys favorable environment, atmosphere and conditions. Both sides should start from the overall perspective of deepened strategic cooperative partnership, implement each cooperation program in the spirit of mutual trust and advance steadily towards new and greater goals.