BEIJING — Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, buoyed by pledges of international assistance for his war-shattered country, won an offer of reconstruction aid Wednesday from China.

Karzai's visit to Beijing, where he met Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, followed a two-day conference in Tokyo where donor nations promised $4.5 billion in aid for Afghanistan.

Zhu told Karzai that China has "always followed with interest the situation of peace, stability, unity, and development of Afghanistan."

"China is ready to provide assistance to the best of our ability to your effort of reconstruction," Zhu said.

The two sides also discussed China's efforts to crush Muslim militants in its northwestern region of Xinjiang who have carried out occasional bombings and attacks against Chinese rule. Beijing said this week that the separatists had links to terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network that was based in Afghanistan.

The Afghan foreign minister, Abdullah, held out the possibility that his government might repatriate any suspected Chinese terrorist.

"People, terrorist groups from Xinjiang province, were operating in Afghanistan under the command of al-Qaida, in close collaboration with al-Qaida networks," Abdullah, who uses one name, said at a news conference.

Asked if they might be sent back to China, Abdullah added: "We will not exclude any type of cooperation. We said that our commitment in the war against terror is full. It includes all terrorists from all over the world, those that want to use the Afghan soil against their own country, their own people."

After the meeting, the two countries' foreign ministers signed an agreement covering $4.6 million in aid that China had already pledged before Karzai's one-day visit.

The aid includes medical equipment and educational supplies and $1 million that China promised in Tokyo to help finance Karzai's interim government, according to the top Afghan diplomat in Beijing, Abdul Basir Hotak.

Abdullah said he was optimistic that Chinese President Jiang Zemin would offer more pledges of aid when he meets Karzai on Thursday. He mentioned roads, bridges, communications and medical equipment as areas where China could help.

The foreign minister said his government also would create a body, "which will be sort of independent" and staffed by Afghans, to account for the promised billions in foreign aid and to prevent any corruption.

He gave no details, but said: "We should do everything in our hands to make it as clear, as transparent and accountable as possible."

While China was not among Afghanistan's most generous donors at Tokyo, Karzai told Zhu he had been eager to visit his nation's giant neighbor.

"The moment we received the invitation, we immediately said: 'Yes, let's hurry.' Chinese-Afghan relations are very, very old," Karzai said.

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China and Afghanistan share just a short mountainous border. But Beijing acted with unusual swiftness to re-establish a presence in the Afghan capital after the collapse of the Taliban, sending a team of diplomats to Kabul to contact Afghan officials and inspect the site of China's embassy that it closed in 1993.

Hotak said China plans to send a vice foreign minister, Wang Yi, to Kabul to formally reopen the embassy on Feb. 6.

While China endorsed the war that brought down the Taliban, Beijing is also concerned about the increased U.S. military presence in central Asia — a region Chinese leaders view as strategically important.

"To have a military presence in one's neighboring countries is, of course, a cause for concern," said Pan Wei, a politics expert at Peking University. "Wouldn't the United States be worried if China stationed troops in Canada and Cuba?"

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