Chinese President Hu Jintao is to attend a Central Asia security forum next week, keen to assert his country's influence in the region whose oil and gas it covets but whose instability is a matter of concern.
Combating what China calls terrorism will top the agenda when the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which groups China and Russia with the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan meets in Astana on Tuesday.
"Member states will take new measures to step up the fight against terrorism, separatism and extremism," SCO Secretary-General Zhang Deguang told a news conference. "Deals signed will strengthen functions of counter-terrorism."
For China, the group's mandate to combat those forces takes on new urgency this year, after the president of Kyrgyzstan was toppled in a popular revolt and the suppression of a rebellion in the eastern Uzbek town of Andizhan that killed about 500.
Both are worrying developments for a Chinese leadership bent on maintaining stability within its own vast territory, and fearful unrest will fuel separatist sentiment in its Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, which borders Central Asia.
"The Chinese can attract support by using the incidents to gain support for the SCO. They're trying to use those to make sure nothing like this happens in China," said Niklas Swanstrom, director of the Silk Road Studies Programme at Sweden's Uppsala University.
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