Senior military officer Zhang Qinsheng on Friday called on the
China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) to conduct deeper and more
extensive multilateral peacekeeping operations.
"The PLA's participation in United Nations peacekeeping
operations has played a positive role in promoting world peace,
solving disputes and maintaining regional security and stability,"
Zhang, deputy chief of the General Staff of the PLA, pointed out in
his keynote speech at the closing ceremony of China's first
peacekeeping conference.
The lieutenant-general called for strengthening China's
peacekeeping force, improving the legal framework and building an
effective operations mechanism.
Major PLA department chiefs and representatives of the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Finance and China's
peacekeeping force attended the four-day conference to discuss
in-depth the management, training, rotation, security and
international exchanges of Chinese peacekeepers.
China has contributed more than 7,000 peacekeepers to UN
peacekeeping operations since 1990, statistics show. Eight Chinese
peacekeepers have lost their lives and several dozen have been
injured since then.
Currently, 1,643 Chinese peacekeepers are serving on UN missions
in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Lebanon and Sudan.
The majority of them are engaged in engineering, transportation and
medical services. About 100 are military observers and staff
officers.
Chinese peacekeepers have built over 7,300 kilometers of roads
and 200 bridges, treated over 28,000 patients, performed more than
230 surgical operations, transported materials more than 3 million
kilometers and cleared over 7,500 explosives.
(Xinhua News Agency June 23, 2007)