TROOPS from China and Kyrgyzstan will take part in a large-scale joint anti-terrorism exercise next month, the Chinese foreign ministry said yesterday.

　　“China and Kyrgyzstan have agreed to hold joint anti-terrorism military exercises in the border area in October,” a foreign ministry spokesman said.

　　“This demonstrates the resolute will of China and Kyrgyzstan to jointly combat the three evil forces (of terrorism, separatism and extremism),” he said.

　　The Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Po newspaper said yesterday the exercise would involve tens of thousands of troops and cover a 100-kilometer-deep area along the border.

　　The border between China and Kyrgyzstan stretches for several hundred kilometers in the western region of Xinjiang.

　　The exercise aims to practice coordinated operations against international terrorism and test various anti-terrorism tactics, Wen Wei Po said.

　　It will be the first bilateral anti-terrorism exercise within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which groups six states in and around Central Asia including China and Russia, the foreign ministry spokesman said.

　　He said the exercise would also mark a concrete step in implementing the Shanghai Convention, signed in June last year, which lays a legal foundation for joint efforts to combat terrorism and separatism.

　　The Shanghai group was formally established in June 2001, when Uzbekistan joined the existing Shanghai Five which has been meeting each year since 1996.

　　Besides China, Russia and Kyrgyzstan, the group includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

　　The group has pledged to cooperate against international terrorism, ethnic separatism and religious extremism in the Muslim-dominated Central Asian region.

　　(SD-Agencies)