CNN - December 10, 1999

MOSCOW (AP) -- Weapons sales to China were an important topic in President Boris Yeltsin's meetings with Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, and Moscow has agreed to deliver another batch of top-of-the line fighter jets to China in a $1 billion deal, a news report said Friday.

The Interfax news agency quoted Yeltsin's foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko as saying that arms trading companies of both nations had struck the deal on selling Sukhoi fighters to China shortly before the Russian president's 26-hour visit to China, which ended Friday.

Arms sales and related cooperation were a key subject in talks between Yeltsin and Jiang, Prikhodko said.

Yeltsin used the trip to get backing for what he described as the need to counterbalance alleged U.S. attempts to dominate global affairs. He won China's support for Russia's military action in Chechnya and lashed out at U.S. President Bill Clinton for criticizing the campaign.

Prikhodko refused to elaborate on the jet sale, but an official with the Russian Trade Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the contract envisaged the delivery of several dozen modern fighters.

According to media reports, Russia has already sold more than 70 Su-27 jets to China since 1992, and in 1996 sold a license for China to manufacture 200 more aircraft.

China has also purchased a wide array of Russian missiles, submarines and destroyers worth billions of dollars, making it the largest customer for Russia's ailing defense industries.

According to one of the latest contracts, Russia sold China two powerful Sovremenny-class destroyers carrying anti-ship missiles. The first ship is to sail from the northern port of St. Petersburg to China later this month, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Friday.

Russia has also sold China eight Ka-27 and Ka-29 anti-submarine helicopters to equip the destroyers, the agency said.