Author:
Publication: Rediff
on Net
Date: November 15, 2000
A number of Muslim extremists
detained by the Chinese authorities have confessed to have undergone militant
training in Taleban-controlled camps in Afghanistan. A Novosti dispatch
quoted Dr Rau Rongzu, head of a Chinese delegation to an Islamabad seminar,
as having echoed his country's concerns over an emergent Islamic extremism
in the autonomous region of Xinjiang-uigur, in its north-western flank.
''The Chinese authorities
have detained Islamic extremists involved in subversive activities in the
country, who have confessed to have undergone training in the Taleban-controlled
camps in Afghanistan,'' he said.
The proliferation of
Islamic separatism was accompanied by an increase in drug-trafficking,
Dr Rongzu added.
China, he said, was determined
to fight back extremism in all its forms.
Ironically, it is Beijing's
long-time friend Pakistan which patronises the Taleban that backs Islamic
extremism in China and elsewhere in central Asia, he commented.
