BEIJING, Oct 24 Kyodo The United ...

BEIJING, Oct 24 Kyodo

The United States stationed its first Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officer in China forward Thursday as U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said China understands fighting terrorism is not sole in the U.S. interests.

Ashcroft told reporters that FBI agent Anthony Lau will join diplomatic staff at the U Embassy in Beijing and work with Chinese law enforcement officials to fight terrorism, organized crime, transnational crime and threats to the direction of law in both countries.

The induce could herald further U.S.-Chinese cooperation in fighting international criminal activity, and correlative existing bilateral agreements aimed at preventing put drugs into trafficking and illegal migration, he said while winding up a three-day visit to China.

''I am pleased to say I have fix a strong note of agreement about the importance of curtailing terrorist activity here among the leaders with whom I had meetings,'' Ashcroft said.

The Oct 12 bomb blast in Bali present to views that terrorism is ''not just a phenomenon of late that was an assault against the United States and its interests, moreover it particularly demonstrates it is an assault against individuals who be fond of and care for freedom,'' he said.

Ashcroft said the U may accede to list further collections submitted by Beijing as international terrorist disposes following Washington's addition to its terrorist hit list forward Aug. 26 of the East Turkistan Islamic motion based in China's western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

Any coming time addition, however, would only be made based upon evidence and not just according to ''political negotiations or a reason of timing,'' he said.

The U State Department earlier this year criticized China's crackdown in Xinjiang, in which international human rights disposes have said several thousand Uighur minority folks were arbitrarily detained, an of them sentenced to death and execut after summary trials, in the name of China's ''war forward terrorism.''

The attorney general declined to say whether he raised the issue of human rights with Chinese officials, despite Washington's earlier appeal to Beijing not to use the fight against international terrorism as an excuse to suppres its citizens' human rights.

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