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Pakistan sends relief supplies for China floods
2007-08-17
Pakistan Friday despatched relief supplies including rice and tents to China for victims of devastating floods there that have killed more than 500 people, the foreign ministry said. A plane carrying 150 tents, 1,000 blankets, five tonnes of rice and 200,000 water purifying tablets had left for the northwestern Chinese city of Urumqi, a ministry statement said. Wide swathes of China have been plagued by near-constant torrential downpours since the summer rainy season began, with flooding killing hundreds and displacing hundreds of thousands. Rains brought by tropical storm Pabuk in south China's Guangdong province this month have affected more than one million people and destroyed thousands of houses, the government's information agency Xinhua has said. Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had sent a messgae of condolence to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the foreign ministry statement said. Bilateral relations between the two countries have been deepening in recent years, with Aziz telling his hosts during a visit to Beijing in April that ties were "deeper than the deepest ocean, higher than the highest mountain". Last November, Hu became the first Chinese leader to visit Pakistan in a decade. During his trip, the two countries signed a free trade deal and agreed to boost their strategic partnership in the defence and energy sectors. China is Pakistan's largest arms supplier and the two are jointly developing the JF-17 Thunder fighter jet. Islamabad is helping Beijing deal with the perceived threat of Muslim separatists in China's western Xinjiang region, which borders Kazakhstan and Pakistan and of which Urumqi is the capital.
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