BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged mutual support and enhanced cooperation during talks in Beijing after a commemoration of the end of World War II, the countries’ state media said.
Xi and Kim, along with top officials from their countries, met at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People a day after Kim attended a Chinese military parade alongside other foreign leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kim is making a rare trip outside North Korea.
Xi highlighted the “traditional friendship” between China and North Korea and pledged to consolidate and boost relations, according to a readout of their statements published by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Thursday.
“This position will not change regardless of how the international situation evolves,” Xi told Kim, according to CCTV.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Friday that the leaders discussed increasing high-level visits and contacts as well as strengthening strategic cooperation and protecting shared interests in international and regional affairs. It said Kim left Beijing by his private train Thursday evening after his meeting with Xi.
China has been North Korea’s biggest trading partner and aid provider, though questions have lingered about the strength of their bilateral relationship.
In recent years, Kim’s foreign policy has focused heavily on Russia. He has sent combat troops and ammunition to back Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in return for economic and military assistance. At a meeting with Kim in Beijing after the parade, Putin praised the bravery of North Korean soldiers in the fighting.
But experts say that Kim would feel the need to prepare for the possible end of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Kim, on his first visit to China in six years, brought his young daughter, adding to speculation that she’s being primed as the country’s next leader.
On Wednesday, he joined 26 foreign leaders who watched the parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. It was the first time that Kim had joined an event with a large group of world leaders since taking office in late 2011.
North Korea’s economy has been suffering under heavy US sanctions tied to Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons. Some observers say Kim’s trip could also be meant to increase leverage in potential talks with US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly expressed his hopes to resume diplomacy between the two countries.
China is believed to want its neighbor to return to negotiation and give up its nuclear weapons development.
North Korea’s more recent closer ties with Russia have raised some concern in Beijing, which has long been Pyongyang’s most important ally.
The joint appearance of Kim, Xi and Putin at the parade has sparked speculation about a joint effort to push back at US pressure on their three countries. Trump said as much in a social media post, telling Xi to give his warmest regards to Putin and Kim “as you conspire against The United States of America.”
Putin dismissed that idea at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday, saying no one has expressed anything negative about the Trump administration during his trip to China.
“The President of the United States is not without a sense of humor,” he said.
Although China, North Korea and Russia are embroiled in separate confrontations with the US, they haven’t formed a clear three-way alliance so far.
Zhu Feng, the dean of Nanjing University’s School of International Relations, said that “ganging up” with North Korea would damage China’s image, because the former is the most closed and authoritarian country in the world.
“It should not be overinterpreted that China-North Korea-Russia relations would see reinforcement,” he said.
China’s Xi and North Korea’s Kim pledge deeper ties during meeting in Beijing
https://arab.news/mb6mt
China’s Xi and North Korea’s Kim pledge deeper ties during meeting in Beijing
‘I admire Vision 2030’: Bangladesh’s new PM aims for stronger Saudi, GCC ties
- Saudi Arabia congratulates Tarique Rahman on assuming Bangladesh’s top office
- Relations between Bangladesh and Kingdom were formalized during his father’s rule
DHAKA: After 17 years in exile, Tarique Rahman has taken office as prime minister of Bangladesh, inheriting his parents’ political legacy and facing immediate economic and political challenges.
Rahman led his Bangladesh Nationalist Party to a landslide victory in the Feb. 12 general election, winning an absolute majority with 209 of 300 parliamentary seats and marking the party’s return to power after two decades.
The BNP was founded by his father, former President Ziaur Rahman, a 1971 Liberation War hero. After his assassination in 1981, Rahman’s mother, Khaleda Zia, took over the party’s helm and served two full terms as prime minister — in 1991 and 2001.
Rahman and his cabinet, whose members were sworn in alongside him on Tuesday, take over from an interim administration which governed Bangladesh for 18 months after former premier Sheikh Hasina — the BNP’s archrival who ruled consecutively for 15 years — was toppled in the 2024 student-led uprising.
As he begins his term, the new prime minister’s first tasks will be to rebuild the economy — weakened by uncertainty during the interim administration — and to restore political stability. Relations with the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia and other GCC states, are also high on his agenda.
“Saudi Arabia is one of our long-standing friends,” Rahman told Arab News at his office in Dhaka, two days before his historic election win.
“I admire the Saudi Vision 2030, and I am sincerely looking forward to working with the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. BNP always had a great relationship with the Muslim world, especially GCC nations — UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman — and I look forward to working closely with GCC countries and their leadership to build a long-term trusting partnership with mutual interest,” Rahman said.
The Saudi government congratulated him on assuming the top office on Tuesday, wishing prosperity to the Bangladeshi people.
Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia established formal diplomatic relations in August 1975, and the first Bangladeshi ambassador presented his credentials in late 1976, after Rahman’s father rose to power. That year, Bangladesh also started sending laborers, engineers, doctors, and teachers to work in the Kingdom.
Today, more than 3 million Bangladeshis live and work in Saudi Arabia — the largest expat group in the Kingdom and the biggest Bangladeshi community outside the country.
“I recall that when my father, President Ziaur Rahman, was in office, bilateral relations between our two nations were initiated,” Rahman said. “During the tenure of my mother, the late Begum Khaleda Zia, as prime minister, those relations became even stronger.”
Over the decades, Saudi Arabia has not only emerged as the main destination for Bangladesh’s migrant workers but also one of its largest development and emergency aid donors.
Weeks after Rahman’s mother began her first term as prime minister in 1991, Bangladesh was struck by one of the deadliest tropical cyclones in its history. Riyadh was among the first who offered assistance, and Zia visited Saudi Arabia on her earliest foreign tour and performed Hajj in June 1991.
For Rahman, who had been living in London since 2008 and returned to Bangladesh in December — just days before his mother’s death — the Kingdom will also be one of the first countries he plans to visit.
“I would definitely like to visit Saudi Arabia early in my term,” he said. “Personally, I also wish to visit the holy mosque, Al-Masjid Al-Haram, Makkah, to perform Umrah.”
