By IANS,
Islamabad : Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari arrives Friday in the southern Chinese city of Sanya for the three-day annual meeting of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), the foreign office said Thursday.
“President Zardari will be a key-note speaker at the plenary session under the theme �Asia: Managing Beyond Crisis’ in the Boao Forum,” Foreign Office Spokesman Abdul Basit said at a briefing here.
The forum is being attended by several world leaders with whom Zardari will hold bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the meeting, APP news agency quoted Basit as saying.
Among those whom Zardari will meet is Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for discussions on bilateral ties and regional and global developments, the spokesman said.
This will be second meeting between the two leaders in six months.
According to Basit, Pakistan and China enjoyed an exemplary relationship and had a high degree of mutual trust, understanding and convergence of views on bilateral, regional and international issues.
The visits of Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to China had contributed to strengthening the multi-faceted relationship between the two countries, the spokesman added.
During the April 17-19 BFA meeting, delegates will debate and discuss the impact of the economic crisis on Asia and how the region can effectively weather these.
Initiated in 1998 by former Philippines president Fidel Ramos, former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke and former Japanese prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa, BFA was formally inaugurated in Feb 2001.