Bulgaria president meets Chinese military leader on bilateral ties

September 8, 2011 defpro.com

SOFIA | Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov met with visiting Vice Chairman of China's Central Military Commission Xu Caihou here on Wednesday.

During the meeting, Parvanov said that Xu's visit is a major event of Sino-Bulgarian military relationship in recent years, believing this will play an important role in the development of the two military forces and even the comprehensive cooperative partnership between the two countries.

Bulgaria attaches great importance to China's position and role in the world, appreciates China's foreign policies, views China as an important partner, and is proud of being the second country in the world to recognize the People's Republic of China, the president pointed out.

Parvanov underlined that Bulgaria adheres to the one-China policy, takes developing relations with China as the highest priority, and will never change this policy. Bulgaria is willing to work with China to advance the bilateral relations.

For his part, Xu said that China and Bulgaria have a traditional friendship, bilateral relations have withstood the test of history and great changes of the international situation.

In recent years, the two countries have frequent exchanges at all levels, have got fruitful achievemet in the cooperations at economy, culture and other fields, and maintain good cooperaion in international and regional affairs, said Xu.

Xu stressed that China cherishes its traditional friendship with Bulgaria, appreciates the Bulgarian government's adherence to the one-China policy and support to China's reunification. China is ready to make joint efforts with Bulgaria to deepen the development of friendly relationship and cooperation.

On the same day, Xu also met with Bulgaria's Parliament Speaker Tsetska Tsacheva and Denfense Minister Anyu Angelov.

Tsacheva told Xu that the development of friendly relations with China is the consensus of all Bulgarian parliamentary parties.

She said that Bulgaria Parliament is willing to actively promote the contacts of two legislative bodies, strengthen exchanges in legislation and promote the stable development of bilateral relations.

Bulgaria will play its unique role in promoting EU-China relations, stressed Tsacheva.

Xu said that Sino-Bulgarian relationship is a good example for the friendly co-existence between countries with different social systems. Bulgria is China's reliable friend and partner in the EU. China hopes both sides to keep mutual understanding and support the issues concerning each other's core interests.

During the meeting with Angelov, Xu said that the Chinese side attaches importance to developing bilateral military relations. China is willing to work with Bulgaria to maintain the momentum of high-level military visits and further strengthen the exchanges and cooperation in military academic, personnel training and professional areas, continue to deeply develop bilateral military relations.

According to Angelov, currently, the Sino-Bulgarian military relations have developed smoothly and played an important role in the overall development of bilateral relations.

Angelov expressed that he fully agreed with China on the proposals about the development of bilateral military relations. Bulgaria will make joint efforts with China to strengthen exchanges and cooperation in military technology, rescue disaster and other areas, learn from each other experiences in military modernization and advance the development of bilateral military relations. (Xinhua)