China and Pakistan on Wednesday held a joint anti-terrorism drill close to the two countries' borders with Afghanistan, officials and state media said. Troops from the two countries held the drill in Tashkurgan, a Tajik-dominated county of China's far-western, Moslem majority region of Xinjiang. A local government official in Tashkurgan said the drill began on Wednesday, as state media said the two sides held a rehearsal on Tuesday before the main drill. Tashkurgan is in the Pamir mountains at an altitude of more than 4,000 metres, close to China's borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. "The exercise is aimed to further strengthening cooperation between the two countries and armies, improve the capacity of jointly combating terrorism, and contain and crack down on the forces of separatism, extremism and terrorism," the official Xinhua news agency quoted unidentified PLA sources as saying before the drill. The exercise is part of China's plan, formed in 2002, to broaden its security cooperation with other countries by participating in bilateral and mulitilateral military drills.
